


The New Boss

by mitsukai613



Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:34:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 57,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitsukai613/pseuds/mitsukai613
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is, as far as anyone knows, dead, along with his right hand Nathan Hendricks, and as such, someone new has to take over. This new guy takes an immediate interest in Johnny's Wizard, and decides to take him for himself by way of a magical device retrieved from one of Harry's many enemies. </p><p>Harry takes objection to this, of course, and with the help of his friends (who have been treating him rather a lot like some depressed maiden recently, much to his chagrin) plots how to escape this hold, and, ultimately, discover the big plot behind his capture to begin with. Along the way, though, he also begins to discover emotions for someone that he didn't quite expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I am actually working on the Hobbit stuff I promised now, but I'm kind of getting over some writer's block at the moment, and since I'm having some issues getting stuff written, I wanted to stick to familiar territory while I got over it. I'm going to try to get back to once-a-week posting, though, with the date being Wednesdays again (starting next week, obviously, partially because I'm going out of town for a few days this week). Anyway, my apologies for the long wait, but hopefully this will make up for it. 
> 
> Oh, and I also wanted to drop another quick "thanks a billion" to ghostdreaming, considering she gave me this plot and a couple for the Hobbit which is majorly helping with that whole writer's block thing I mentioned.

                Sometimes things happen, things you never once thought were possible. One morning, early on a Tuesday, one of these things happened to me (which, given my life and experiences, is probably not all that shocking, but this was… well, it was worse).

                Murphy called me, the shrill ring of the phone drawing me from the first deep sleep I’d had in months, but when I answered I found I couldn’t be upset. Murphy isn’t generally the type to get straight to the point on the phone, at least when nothing important is going on. She likes to joke around, she likes to see how her conversation partner is doing, and then she goes on. It’s one of the few things she allows herself to dawdle at, so when she doesn’t, I know something’s wrong. This was one of those times.

                “Dresden, get your ass down to the Kennedy Expressway. Something happened, we need you.” I blinked; the ground was covered in snow and most of the roads were iced over. Last I heard, travel was basically prohibited except in the direst of circumstances. Why the hell did Murph want me on basically the most dangerous road in the city (and god bless the Blue Beetle, but she has trouble on the safe ones) in conditions like those that were outside?

                “Now? Hell’s Bells, Murph, why are you out there? I wouldn’t be surprised if it started snowing again soon. It’s dangerous.” A pause, tense and uninviting, filled the crackling line.

                “I know. Something happened, Harry. It’s police business, but not SI. I don’t want to tell you over the phone. Just get over here, and be careful about it.” And then she was gone, leaving me worried. I knew that someone had gotten hurt, or worse; there was no other reason for her to sound like that, for her to explain it as she had. The only matter was who, and my mind assaulted me with the possibilities. Michael, desperate to be where he had to be, to follow the Big Guy’s commands, flying down the road in his truck. Thomas, maybe running from something, maybe trying to get to his salon on the Loop, flipping his stupid Hummer. The Alphas coming to a friend on the other side of town’s aid. Over and over, a thousand scenarios, and even though I know you aren’t supposed to drive distracted, that’s exactly what I did.

                I tried to drive in tire tracks the whole way there, but periodically I’d hit a road without them, and in those cases I’d generally find every patch of black ice on the road. I couldn’t have been going more than five miles per hour most of the way there, and it took over an hour, but I did eventually see flashing lights in the distance. I got out a little early, unwilling to risk driving the whole way up, and my legs ate up the distance to where Murphy and a few other cops I didn’t recognize stood. I waved, but she didn’t wave back, instead just nodding and taking me by the arm, steering me away from the line of police cars blocking what I assumed was an accident. The biggest giveaway was probably the ambulance, but it didn’t look like anyone was getting put into it. I didn’t know if that was a blessing or a curse at that point. A plain car I also didn’t recognize was parked just outside the perimeter, a youngish looking guy with way too much hair gel standing just outside the driver’s side door.

                “Karrin, who was it?” I asked, quiet, and she smiled faintly, the look of it a little sad on her face.

                “Marcone.” Time froze. Marcone? No. Marcone didn’t do something so mundane as to get into a car wreck. That was something normal people did. Someone had to have been wrong.

                “Is he…,” I tried, but I couldn’t get the words out, and she reached out and grabbed my hand. She never held my hand. No, no, no, no.

                “He’s dead, Harry. Hendricks too.” I didn’t believe it. I’d call it a bad joke if Murphy played jokes. Marcone couldn’t… die. It wasn’t in him. He was too much of a scumbag to do that. I mean, after all he’d faced, all he’d accomplished (he’d lived through being kidnapped by the Denarians, for chrisssakes, and all he’d asked after it was if Ivy was okay. He was the first mortal Baron in history. He had a Valkyrie on his payroll) a car crash, of all things, could not be what took him out of the game. And Hendricks, it was basically the same story with him, except he’d been dating the Valkyrie, and that was probably even more impressive, right? I shook my head and stepped back, feeling my hands shaking, and she kept the one she held clasped tightly, followed me back.

                “They can’t be. It doesn’t _work_ like that.”

                “Harry,” she tried, and I think I saw more sympathy in her eyes than ever before.

                “ _No!_ It doesn’t, okay? If it was… if it was a monster or something, I could understand that. But a car wreck? No. When he dies, it’s not going to be because of a fucking car wreck!”

                “Harry, I’m sorry.”

                “I don’t even like him, Murphy! He’s a stupid, bastard, scumbag, and Hendricks is just a fucking bulldog, but that’s not. They didn’t die, alright? They didn’t. Not like this. I hate him, but this isn’t how the story ends, a crash into a median on a snowy day. It ends in some… epic battle or something, right? Or maybe old and fat and tired, successful after everything, passing the business on to, like, Hendricks’ and Gard’s future kid or something.” She squeezed my hand more tightly and shook her head.

                “I knew you’d react like this; it’s why I wanted you to come down, so you could check for yourself. I knew you wouldn’t believe it otherwise. Come with me,” she whispered, sounding like she wished she didn’t have to do this, like she was pulling a trump card. The barricade of cop cars parted, a morbid red sea, and there it was, a big black sedan with illegally tinted windows, and I knew that car.

                I’d gotten menaced into that car about a decade earlier. Thinking back on it, I’d gotten menaced into that car _exactly_ a decade earlier; this was the same day I’d met Marcone. An inane thought passed that I should send him flowers when I got home, but then I remembered why I was here and felt a little sick. What made me sicker was perhaps that I’d broken this car more than once, and what if that was why it crashed? What if… I couldn’t think about that. Murphy kept her grip on me soft as she led me passed the car (driver’s side basically crushed after its encounter with the concrete median and it’s landing on said side after being flipped, pain chipped, tinted glass shattered in places and cracked in others, looking exactly like one of those macabre ads you see about the risks of drunk driving). I shut my eyes when we reached the ambulance’s open back door, and when I opened them, two gurneys, both with white sheets covering the shapes on top, were lowered down, and then the white sheets were taken off.

                Hendricks was on the right (and funny how he was at Marcone’s right hand even in death. At least that was probably how they’d both want it), looking strangely small where he lay, not at all the threatening mass of snarling muscle I was used to. He was paler, too, and a deep cut marred the left side of his face. All other injuries I saw were on his left side too (a broken arm, the bone bent and distorted under the skin, tears in his clothes that probably hid other scrapes and bruises, and probably some broken ribs too, if I had to guess) which I guess made sense, given the nature of the accident. I wished I could stop thinking about things like that, things a PI would notice at a crime scene, but I couldn’t. At least, I guess, it was better than the alternative thoughts, the emotional ones, I could’ve been having, and those would’ve hurt a hell of a lot worse.

                Marcone was on the left eyes closed, tanned olive skin faded to death shroud gray. He looked a lot older, I noticed, a lot less in power, in control. His suit was rumpled and stained and it didn’t look right. I wanted to straighten it because that’s not how people should see him; it’s not how he would want to be seen. He was bloody too, some of it dried beside his mouth, and he hardly looked like himself with his eyes closed. I wondered if I’d ever see that particular shade of green on anyone else. I didn’t think so; it was too rare, too strange, too him. Even his hair was mussed, and that was really insane; I’d never seen him without it slicked back from his forehead, not a hair out of place. I felt myself reaching out and my hand settled on his icy wrist. I jerked back at the feeling, some of it simple uneasiness and distress and some of it the residual feel of an Angel of Death that I was too familiar with.

                That feel… I’d never seen it faked before. But that couldn’t be right. Those bodies… there was no way they were real. No way were those two dead. I gritted my teeth because that’s what I’d always been taught to do when you wanted to cry and shouldn’t, at least when you couldn’t manage a grin. Murphy’s hand moved from my own hand to my shoulder where she squeezed gently.

                “Real?” I coughed and looked away because there was nothing else to do.

                “Yeah.” She didn’t press for more and I didn’t expect that she would; Murph has always been good at knowing when to push and when to stop. She let me walk away, and of course the guy by his car stopped me.

                “Hey, hey, man, what’s so special that you get in? I saw it happen, man. Fucking crazy; never thought a car worth that much could pull off spins and flips like that. Thought those fuckers were supposed to be safer and shit. Still, would’ve been better if it’d like, blown up, you know, like in those action flicks?” I wondered if he’d want to see one of those explosions firsthand. I could probably pull one off, and whatever shit he used in his hair was probably _really_ flammable. But Murphy would be angry if she had to book me again, so I didn’t.

                “Screw off and tell the cops what you saw,” I grumbled, walking back towards my car, him squawking indignantly, but Murphy wouldn’t let me.

                “I’m not letting you drive right now. You’ll just end up hurting yourself. Stay here and I’ll drive you back when this is all wrapped up. I promise no one will steal the wreck you pass off as a car.” I nodded, walked a few feet away, and sat down on the median, Listening as Murphy talked to Mr. Action Movie and Hair Gel.

                “How far away were you when you saw it?”

                “I dunno, pretty far? I wasn’t following close, because of the snow and all. Scared the shit out of me when it spun out. Who’s that guy back there anyway?”

                “He came to identify the bodies.”

                “Oh. Oh, shit, man, I didn’t know, the ambulance and all, I thought-.”

                “They’re generally better for carrying corpses than cop cars.”

                “”Yeah. Yeah, hey, can you apologize to him for me? I didn’t mean to. Yeah.”

                “Apologize yourself, after we finish. Did you see what caused the accident?”

                “Just ice, I think. I called 911 as soon as it hit the median, stopped in the road, you know? Figured I wouldn’t block traffic, at least not enough of it to matter. Hell, it’s kind of funny; I’d only just caught sight of the thing when the accident happened, even though I’d been following the tire tracks for about ten miles.” Murphy nodded. “Why’re you asking all this stuff anyway? I mean, wouldn’t it be pretty obvious what caused the accident in weather like this?” If this was a normal case, if normal people had been in the car, probably. I figured Murphy wanted to rule out foul play. Still, I didn’t think any of Johnny’s enemies, at least not the mortal ones, would be bright enough to screw with his car in bad weather so it’d spin out and look like an accident, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to know for sure that such a wreck would kill him, or even put him in the hospital, really. Crashes were unpredictable.

                “Just being thorough, sir, but I think we’ve got all we need. You might want to wait for one of the officers to escort you home, though; I don’t quite feel safe letting you drive off in this weather. We’ll get your car moved somewhere safe and you can pick it up when the weather breaks, or we can deliver it to your residence.”

                “Yeah, alright. Sounds good,” he said, and walked towards me. I stopped Listening, instead just doing my best to relax where I sat. He was silent for a few seconds.

                “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that people had… you know. Friends of yours?” I snorted.

                “Hell no. Fucking scumbag and his fucking guard dog.” He blinked, slow.

                “But you seem… really upset, man.” I shrugged. My thing with Marcone was weird, always had been. I didn’t like him, didn’t like what he did, but he was a necessary component, at least for now, and I knew the city had had worse in his position before. He was my lesser evil and sometimes even my ally. Not my friend, but… close. Close as someone you despise can be, at least.

                “It was weird. They were… they pissed me off. Didn’t like them. Probably going to miss them. _Do_ miss them, a little. Right now, it’s just, hard to believe, you know? Some people just seem constant. That’s how those two were. Invincible, eternal. Good people who did a lot of bad things.” The guy blinked.

                “Who the hell were they?”

                “You’ll figure it out in the papers in a couple of days.” And then he just walked off. I didn’t particularly care. It wasn’t like he was particularly great conversation anyway. So, from there I waited. I watched the ambulance drive off, watched the other guy’s car get towed and watched him hop into the cab of the tow truck with the driver, watched them leave. Then I watched the cops that weren’t Murphy get the scene cleaned up while Murphy made a hell of a lot of calls, some to people I knew and some to people I didn’t, and I wondered for the first time who was going to come out on top of the soon-to-ensue clusterfuck. Then we left, just like that, like nothing had happened.

                She dropped me off at my apartment with an open offer to call her if anything (anything, Harry, I’m your friend, I love you) happened, or if I needed anything (I mean it, Harry. I will punch you if you try to ignore this and not ever talk about it). I went inside and toasted a pop tart. Mouse licked my hand and Mister stared at me until I petted him. I filled up their food bowls. I read a book. I did everything I do in a normal day when I can’t make it to my office. The normalcy made me feel sick.

* * *

 

                The next few weeks, the power struggle, was hell. Violence was up majorly, gang killings more common than they’d been since the twenties, drugs flowing like never before, no regulation, and Stars, I missed Marcone. And then, it ended. A new don, a new power, arose. Just like that. The papers didn’t talk about it, obviously, but I knew when it happened. The silence outside my apartment, on the neighboring not-quite-wholesome regions of town, spoke volumes. I didn’t get a name or a face until a new guy started appearing in all John’s old places in the society pages.

                Vittorio Alessi, a big man, probably a few inches taller and a little broader than Marcone had been, musclebound and loving to show it off in perfectly tailored suits with bright red power ties. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin without John’s tan, the works; traditional Italian through and through, if I had to hazard a guess. He smiled with all his teeth and his words in the published interviews pissed me off for not really any reason at all, considering they were no more condescending than Marcone’s were. Still yet, he was pretty much not at all my problem; I was, obviously, totally untied to the organized crime syndicate now. All that was left were the funerals, one of which, Hendricks’, I’d already attended and the other of which I was then preparing for.

                I thought about Hendricks’ as I dressed in my only nice suit, one that fit me well and had actually been tailored a la Michael, who, as far as I knew, was also attending today, while Murphy had only sent her respect and some roses because of the backlash she knew would arise if she came in person.

                Gard had cried, some, stoic and silent, looking straight ahead the whole while. Had I not been seated beside her, I wouldn’t have even noticed she was doing it, to be honest, but that was just something about her. She told me after, standing in the graveyard, her hand a little dusty from the handful of dirt she’d tossed into the grave, that she was proud to have known the man well enough to cry for him.

                “I wish I had,” I said, surprising myself a little, and her hand had settled on my cheek firmly, her thumb swiping under my eye.

                “You did.” And then I left. I didn’t really belong there anyway; mostly the only people who were still hanging around were his family (two parents, both as red-haired as him, the father obviously where he got his size, and a younger sister who might’ve been eighteen) and the people who I assumed were his closest friends, some of them part of the outfit and some of them not. My hands couldn’t be held still the whole drive back and the shaking was starting to piss me off; I was a Wizard and Wizards don’t shake.

                And now I was probably about to repeat that again, with John’s funeral. I didn’t want to, not really, but… I had this feeling that he would’ve shown up to mine, had the need ever arose. It was a matter of, not friendship, but… respect. I respected him enough in life to see him off in death, to throw up a quick prayer for him and hope my endorsement wouldn’t get him sent away. If he even left at all, I guess. Someone as stubborn as him would probably stick around as a shade, not bother with the whole “send your soul to be judged” thing. Either that or he’d take over the heavens before sending some troops off to acquire hell too. I sighed, smiled, and climbed into the Beetle so I could meet and join the procession to the church.

                Not surprisingly, hundreds upon hundreds of people showed up. The pews filled up fast and folding chairs were brought in to fill the center aisle and offer extra seating, and still some people had to stand in the back. For some reason, though, the guy at the door, one I distantly recognized as one of Johnny’s close hands, brought me to the front row of pews and sat me down with a conciliatory pat on the shoulder, like he expected me to start bawling into his shoulder right there.

                “He’d be glad to know you were here.” I shrugged, looked away.

                “He’d have done the same for me.” The guy smiled, his own eyes shimmering a little with moisture.

                “Yeah. Just let me know if you need something, okay?” I nodded and he walked off. Shortly thereafter, Gard arrived and took a place beside me again, followed by the man from the papers himself, Alessi. Why the hell he showed up to his predecessor’s funeral, but there he was, dressed up finely and coming to sit at my other side. He didn’t speak, though, so I guess that was a plus, but it was probably mostly because Gard gave him the most absolutely evil look I’ve ever seen her wear, and she’s given me a whole lot. I looked around for Michael and found that he, along with Charity, had been put into the middle row of folding chairs. I lifted my hand to him in greeting and he did the same in response, a small smile on his face. Gard turned to face me as still others poured in from outside.

                “I am sorry that it ends here.”

                “I am too,” I said, my voice a little more hoarse than I recalled it being. “Did you… did you see it coming?” I asked, and she shook her head.

                “I had no visions, no. Had I, I would not have allowed them to go out as they did.” I smiled.

                “What happened to that no interference policy you have?”

                “I am not, perhaps, as indifferent to the affairs of mortals as I once was. At least not those of all mortals. I will not be in this city anymore after today, however.”

                “Getting called back?” She nodded.

                “Indeed. Mr. Vadderung requires me back in headquarters once more. Still yet, if ever you find yourself in need of me, Mr. Dresden, I ask that you call and I shall come. I would not leave a man who I consider an equal and a friend without aide should he need it.” I know it’s probably dumb to hug Valkyries without warning them (especially one who wears her ax strapped to her back even at a funeral) but I didn’t really care at that time. I threw my arms around her and settled my forehead onto her shoulder and found myself gritting my teeth again. “I will miss him as well, you know.”

                “Yeah. I don’t… I can’t… yeah. He was. He was himself, that’s for sure. City won’t be the same without him.” Her hands were solid and warm on my back, her breathing steady, and I don’t know how long a just kind of leaned on her before I got up, feeling markedly better than I had before. We were silent until the funeral began, a priest went to the head of the church and spoke for a while.

                The words kind of just flowed over me, through me, partly because I hadn’t been to a church service in years and was kind of lost in regards to most of the information, and partly because I just didn’t feel up to paying a whole lot of attention. I’d been to a lot of funerals in my life, had never enjoyed hearing the pastor or the priest or whoever else talk. It always felt impersonal, perfunctory. Rather, I felt better hearing the speeches given by those who knew the person; those were where the real good memories, the real feelings, lay. They were what helped me grieve, although I never gave them myself. It seemed like he spoke for hours before the first person did stand, though, the man who’d brought me to my seat.

                “John was more than just my boss. I think most of us here today can say that.” A chorus of smiles, polite laughs. “He helped me when I needed it, gave me god knows how many vacations for me and my family, anything else I might’ve wanted. Hell, even when my son got sick, he was right there, giving him the best hospitals, the best doctors, the best treatments, and he got better because of it. John was my boss, yeah, but he was also my friend, and I’m never going to have another one like him.” He started to cry a little here, the act seeming to upset him more and set him baring his teeth once or twice. “I’m never going to forget about him. I’m never going to meet a better man. And I just wanted this opportunity to… to say goodbye to him. I know I’m not alone in saying that I’m going to miss him.” From there he kind of rushed from the front, his head down, and quiet tears filled the room as person after person stood and gave their speeches. Even Gard got up and said a few words, less than she had at Hendricks’, obviously, but no less powerful or caring for it.

                When everything was done, though, that was when something weird happened. A bunch of people started asking for me to speak, even Gard, and… it was only right. It was only fitting. This was… I’d never see him again. Besides, leaving without a goodbye is rude, and John always got annoyed at me when I was rude to him. I may as well give him a final pleasure of politeness. I stood, my head down, and went to the pulpit, feeling eyes burning into me, feeling a little uncomfortable, but I could manage, I guessed. I cleared my throat.

                “John and I didn’t always get along. Actually, we mostly just bickered at each other whenever we saw each other like it was some weird, genetic predisposition to snark. He was always there when I needed him or his people, though, and I can sure as hell say that for him. He was never the traditional definition of a good guy, and I can’t judge him for that because I’m not either. He did great things, though. He did what was necessary and what other people couldn’t do. He had morals and he stuck by them. I probably never liked him as much as the rest of you did, but I always… I always respected him. I’m going to… he… I… I just want to say goodbye, mostly. I don’t get to say goodbye often. So, John, you glorious scumbag bastard, goodbye. I’m going to miss you, much as it pains me to say it. Hopefully you’ll get some beyond-the-great-beyond laughs from that.” People clapped for that. People were wiping their eyes and smiling. I don’t know why; I’d never really gotten the impression that many of John’s people liked me. Oh well; maybe they were just glad for a little humor. I stepped down and went back to my seat, listened to the priest’s closing words, and went to the cemetery.

                He was getting a nice tombstone, I noted, carved prettily with nice lettering. It didn’t really matter, though, I didn’t exactly pay a whole lot of attention to it at the time beyond a cursory glance. Some guy I didn’t recognize dragged me forwards after he was lowered into the earth and had me throw a handful of dirt down along with his closest friends, a few people I was pretty sure were family members, and Gard. Everyone seemed to be treading softly around me, though, using kid gloves I didn’t need. They all whispered condolences like they were sacred, murmured how sad I must be, gave offers of people I could call, all that kind of thing. Even Michael and Charity acted that way, with Charity not even complaining that I’d taken my jacket off despite the freezing air even though that was normally the sort of mother-y thing she latched onto when I was around. I didn’t get it, obviously, and I was about to leave to give the ones who loved him most time to grieve alone, as I had for Hendricks, but I got stopped.

                Given my track record with organized crime, I’ll give you three guesses who it was.

                “Hello. It’s Harry, isn’t it? My name is Vittorio Alessi, and I’m the one set to take over Mr. Marcone’s business ventures now that he’s passed on.” I blinked at him, hopefully sufficiently deadpan.

                “Good for you?” He chuckled, the sound of it rumbling from somewhere low in his chest. It sounded a little like the kind of laugh someone practices and I felt my hackles rising. I didn’t like him. He set something funny off in me, kind of like how I expected Marcone to when we first met, the sort of inherent disgust most people think of when they think Crime Lord.

                “I realize that this is likely not the best time for you, Harry, but I feel as if we must talk.” I rolled my eyes.

                “Look, I know I was around Marcone a lot, but I really don’t care what you do. Just don’t destroy the city and we won’t ever have to cross paths again, yeah? Keep the streets safe for the people who aren’t involved, don’t start trying to spread your business where it shouldn’t be spread, and I’ll never talk to you again.” He didn’t let go of where he’d grabbed my upper arm upon first stopping me.

                “I’m afraid that’s not at all what I want, Harry. Rather, I want you by my side as you stood by Mr. Marcone’s. Can’t you imagine it? I’d give you a greater say than ever he did; my people would respect you, treat you as a moll ought to be. Wouldn’t you like that? You and I, Harry, we could do great things. We could make this city’s future so much better, so much brighter. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?” His hand slid from my arm down to my wrist, closing their like a cuff and squeezing just hard enough to be construed as a threat if I did something he didn’t like. You know, like try to jerk my arm away, which I did, at which point he squeezed even harder, until I could feel the bones rubbing and shifting under my skin. I let out a hiss of air from between my teeth and then we were suddenly surrounded by John’s old people.

                “Let him go, Alessi,” one said, voice cool and smooth, hand just slightly under his jacket and I knew he had a gun. Obviously Alessi knew it too because he dropped me as if I’d burned him (and I promise I didn’t; I only thought about it real hard).

                “I’ll call you, Harry,” he said, and then he left. The guy who’d spoken came over to me shaking his head.

                “He’s… brash, sorry. Best for the job, though; he came out on top.” I shook my head.

                “Doesn’t make him the best; makes him the toughest, maybe, the most threatening. Might even be clever. But probably not the best.” He laughed and proceeded to clap me hard on the shoulder.

                “Probably would’ve been better if you took over. It’s probably what John would’ve wanted, actually, but that position isn’t exactly something you can leave in a will. It’s normally the kid, but John didn’t have any children.” He gave me a pointed look and I wondered what he wanted from me.

                “What?” He shrugged.

                “Nothing. Listen, can I escort you back to your apartment? Make sure it’s locked up good and all? Alessi is dangerous, and it looks like he might want what John had. I know you can look after yourself and all, but I’d just feel better.” I stared.

                “And what exactly is it that John had?” He stared right back at me.

                “Did you hit your head somewhere or something? You were his… you know. His, uh… moll? You know, basically.” And suddenly I realized exactly what Alessi had said.

                “Hell’s _Bells,_ no. Just. Wow. No. People seriously thought that? Didn’t I say that I hardly even liked the guy?” He cocked his head.

                “You don’t have to be ashamed about it. Boss loved you.” I sighed. I really, really didn’t feel like arguing the point just then, to tell you the honest truth of it. Sometimes giving up is the best thing to do, honestly.

                “Er, yeah. Okay. Can we go? I need to feed my pets.” He, thankfully, nodded, and together we walked left, him climbing into a smallish, sporty blue car and me climbing into my beloved Beetle. I was feeling so magnanimous (or maybe just tired and a tiny bit too bothered to care) that I didn’t even complain when I heard him checking my door after I closed it.

* * *

 

                My excuse is I wasn’t expecting him; I was figuring that if I got any visitors that day, they’d be in the form of my worried friends, not newly promoted mob bosses. Does _anyone_ expect newly promoted mob bosses as their first company of a day? I really hope not. Anyway, so I answered the door, and yeah, there he was, leaning against my door frame like he was some kind of male model or something. Which, come to think of it, is pretty similar to how Thomas usually looks when I answer the door for him. Oh well, it wasn’t nearly as endearing when this asshole did it, I think mostly because Thomas doesn’t really mean to do it.

                “Harry,” he greeted, voice soft, and I stepped forward just slightly, propped my hip on the door, and got a good grip on my staff, just in case.

                “What the hell do you want from me, you dumbass? I don’t want to deal with this right now.”

                “I only desire your companionship as Mr. Marcone once had it. I have heard of your power, and your influence in… certain circles, and I feel that this could be an asset to me, and to the development of our city.” Our city. I felt a little ill at that; John had only called it that once, a year or two before, when he was particularly desperate for my help in something. It had felt passionate, important, then; it had felt like he was giving up an inherent part of his being. When this guy said it, it sounded irreverent and pointless, a waste of words. Something about the man was just consistently rubbing me the wrong way, honestly.

                “Fuck off.” I tried to close the door, but he caught it with one hand and used the other to pull off some weird maneuver and form a manacle about my wrist again.

                “Harry, I do not want our relationship to be so antagonistic. I would rather like it to be willing on your part, and I think that if you were to give it the old college try, as they say, you would find that you took quite well to working at my side. However, if you continue to persist in being so frustratingly stubborn, I do have ways to force the issue.” I had to laugh even though my wrist ached where he held it, fingers digging into the bruise he’d left the day before. I really don’t think people in my situation should bruise so easily, by the way, but apparently fate hath professed that I must spend my life wearing various shades of black, blue, yellow, and green.

                “Look, man, I don’t think there’s much you can do that hasn’t already been done to me, beyond kill me, which is apparently not what you’re after. So, how’s about you just let go of me, leave, and forget where I live, and I’ll forget about these little trysts.” He looked thoughtful for a minute, but his grip never slackened.

                “No, killing you is far from my goal, as is, I’m afraid, leaving right now. I’ve heard, however, that one would be surprised by what they could live through.” I busted out with laughter again.

                “Wow, I never thought I’d meet someone else who watched the Aladdin sequel! My godmother really likes that quote, by the way; she’s got this weird admiration for Jafar. I think she used it on my when I was right about sixteen. See, it’s a real funny story; she tied me to her wall and bled me for days, filled bowls of it, painted us both in it. Sometimes she’d turn me upside down if it wasn’t flowing well enough. Sometimes she’d drag it out until I had maybe a minute or two before I’d bleed to death, then she’d stop and heal me and do it all over again. You got something better up your sleeves, pal? I gotta say I kind of doubt it.” Shock painted his expression and I tried to use the opportunity to jerk away, but he wasn’t having it. Instead, he used a move I was pretty sure Murphy really liked that turned my momentum around and, instead of using it to pull away and back inside my house, got me fully outside of my wards. I felt really, really stupid and wondered if all the moth-drawn-inexplicably-to-bug-zappers comparison people had begun to enjoy making with me really did apply after all.

                “I suppose this means that you still insist on being uncooperative?” I gave him a look I’d been practicing, one of totally disbelief.

                “I wouldn’t cooperate with you for anything. Not even if you offered me one free pass to skip an apocalypse.” He gave me an odd look but it still wasn’t enough to get him to slacken the damn grip. What was with mobsters and their manhandling, by the way? Depending on exactly how pissed off I’d managed to make him, John had gotten sort of like this too. Maybe not quite as rough, but comparable. And Hendricks had definitely managed to leave more than one mark on me over the years, usually not even intentionally, but more he didn’t quite know his own strength when throwing me out of the way of something, or he got a little carried away with the menacing.

                “Ah well. C’est la vie, as they say. Please do try to remember that I did not want it to come to this, most especially not quite so quickly, but you have certainly managed to be just bothersome, and just enticing, enough to evaporate my patience.” He stopped with his stupid little speech and the first thing I noticed was _pain_.

                He’s slid something heavy onto my fingers that clung to the flesh and seemed to dig in, the mechanism seeming kind of similar to Thorn Manacles but not, as I’d not been drawing any magic.

                “It’s keyed to react to disobedience, Harry. Rather neat little trick, isn’t it? I picked it up from an old friend of yours who was quite integral in bringing me to power. I’m sure she’s missed you greatly, but she’s sold her claim for quite the pretty penny, as well as rather a lot of my old people, but this city has much better to offer, doesn’t it? My, you seem to be hurting quite badly. If you relax and quit fighting I assure you the pain will subside.” He let me go and, shameful though it sounds, I hit the ground fast. I looked down at the hand he’d held immediately and found that two of my fingers were now decorated with smooth golden rings, the both of them tied together with delicately wrought chains. It looked like a piece of jewelry Molly would wear, honestly, beyond the searing agony emanating from them and through the rest of me.

                It burned, mostly, like they were molten, like they were trying to melt clean through my flesh and bone. I grabbed at them with my newly freed hand and tried to rip them off but that only made the hurting more prominent, so I was forced to stop that pretty quickly for fear of passing out.

                I didn’t have much choice but to do what he’d said if I wanted any hope of being able to think clearly enough to get the damn rings off, so I, being way more proactive than people generally give me credit for, relaxed as totally as I could without going to sleep. I put aside my distaste for the man and for being kept and for being used and for being bossed around and walled them all up in some obscure corner of my head. The pain faded to a dull ache, and shortly after faded to nonexistence. I tried to stretch the hand, to check the damage, but found that the chains restricted my movement of the appendage greatly. Of course; magical artifacts just _have_ to keep the symbolism going.

                “What the hell?” I asked, and he laughed shortly, bending at his waist and looping two of his fingers around the connecting chains. He pulled hard enough that the things should’ve shattered, but that, obviously, didn’t happen; instead, I was hauled quite easily to my feet, swaying a little from the minute area of support I had during the process.

                “They’re far less gaudy than a collar, aren’t they? I like them much better, at the least; far easier to pass off as innocuous. Your darling friend assured me that they’d work quite well on you whilst you were being bent to my will, you see.”

                “So, why don’t you tell me who this friend of mine is, huh? I should probably know the identity of the person fucking me over. Only fair, right?”

                “I believe you know her by the name of Arianna Ortega, Harry. Very sweet woman, but quite bothered at your existence. Really you should be happy; I, at least, won’t kill you as she planned to.” I snorted.

                “Yeah, she’s adorable, once you get passed the whole blood sucking demon of the night thing. Also, you’re obviously kind of stupid. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t just give up on murdering me because you threw a little cash her way. I killed her hubby in a duel, you know? And she might have sworn revenge. You know, maybe. If you want my opinion on the matter, she’s just using you to get me weak so she can get her final satisfaction. Plus this way would have the added bonus of her knowing that I was basically being tortured out of my will; kind of poetic, really, considering my will was what killed her husband. She’d get to see my heart get torn out figuratively before she came along to do it literally.”

                “It’s quite lucky that I don’t particularly want your opinion in this matter then, isn’t it?” He smiled, his fingers still looped in the chains, and closed my door with his free hand. Following this, he started dragging me off towards what I guessed was his car. After a quick jolt of pain as my will kicked in yet again, I was forced to follow. I found myself missing John desperately the whole way.


	2. Chapter 2

                I stayed stonily and resolutely silent on the car ride over even though he gave me plenty to make fun of, mostly because I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing me talk when he so obviously wanted me to give a response. Yeah, so, I’m a little bit petty; sue me. I think I’ve got the right to be, considering the situations, and honestly when I don’t have the upper hand, my two options when communicating with my current antagonist are generally either to bitch at them constantly about literally everything or, in contrast, do the exact opposite of what they want as much as I’m able without getting my ass handed to me in some way or another. Besides, apparently the rings didn’t react to indirect disobedience (such as speaking back when spoken to) so I was going to take as much advantage of it as I could. Doing so would give me a way to hold onto some will while I figured out how the damn things worked and, as a result, how to get them off of my fingers.

                “Harry, come now; I’m trying to be as good to you as I’m able. I want a partnership, not mutual antagonism.” I continued staring out the window, my fingers caressing the rings softly, feeling out the enchantment on them.

                It was complicated, I noted, complicated and old. I prodded it softly, just the barest tendril of my magic feeling it out. It stung me harshly at the contact, and I hissed. Alessi smiled at me again, the dick, the expression on his face one of a person watching a particularly pathetic attempt by a puppy dog to catch its own tail.

                “Why is it that, when I try to do you a kindness by not harming you myself, you find a way to hurt yourself anyway?” More staring out the window as we pulled up to an achingly familiar house. He’d taken Marcone’s house, the prick. He seemed to see something he found funny on my face as we stopped, and I felt my chest begin to ache a big again. “Do you like it? I liked it rather a lot, myself; buying it was no matter upon Mr. Marcone’s death. Never settled for less than the best, that man, but then you yourself are a fine example of that. Ah well, come inside and we’ll settle you into our room.” I stayed where I sat in the car and crossed my arm. The rings buzzed with warning on my fingers, but I ignored it. “Harry,” he said again, sounding as if he were giving me one last chance, as if me being disagreeable really hurt his feelings or something. I felt like being difficult because of that, more so than usual.

                I think I held out for a while against the agony bursting from my hand, or at least I like to think I did. I clenched my eyes shut and arched away from the pain’s source, as if that would let me escape from it, and I could feel a little wetness leaking from my eyes. I didn’t scream, though, even when the throbbing reached its crescendo, when the pulse of it seemed louder than my own heartbeat. I couldn’t take it forever, though, and eventually I fell sideways out of the car. The pain ceased and I scrambled my way up to my feet. Alessi looked amused, reaching out and squeezing the hinge of my jaw between his fingers. I finally decided it would be alright to speak.

                “I hate you,” I hissed, hands shaking, “I hate you. You’re not going to be able to keep me.” He shook his head.

                “I beg to differ, sweet. I’m afraid there’s very little you can do in such a state.”

                “Maybe so, but I’ve got friends in high places, and I’m more clever than people generally give me credit for.” The whole of Winter wanted me, meaning they would have a pretty vested interest in keeping me unbroken, at least until the point that they could do it themselves. Gard had given me her promise, and Vadderung liked me. Murphy, Michael, and Thomas would come running when they found out where I was, as would all of my other friends. Marcone’s old people hadn’t seemed to want this to happen. Uriel wouldn’t be pleased, although I wasn’t sure what kind of power he’d have to do anything. All the other various baddies out there that wanted a piece of me would probably get at least as annoyed as Winter would. I’d have plenty of chances; I just had to stick it out until then.

                “How cute,” Alessi said, walking me inside with fingers loosely gripping the chains connecting my fingers as before, this apparently being his preferred method of transporting me, I guess because it wasn’t quite as obviously coercive as a hand around my bicep or at my back or around my wrist. I fell silent again, though, and he dragged me up a flight of stairs, down a few mismatched, twining hallways, and finally into an opulent bedroom, one with soft, thick carpets, hardwood furniture, and a big canopy bed. It also didn’t have any windows, of course. I kept my head high and stared straight ahead. He didn’t seem to care anymore.

                Instead, he flung his arms around my waist, gentle, loose, and I felt magic fill up my throat, felt spells and curses prepare to spill from my lips, but the words were cut off as the gentle grasp transformed into an anaconda’s squeeze. It was as if he wanted to crush the life out of me, tear the air from my lungs and grind my bones down into dust, press me into him until I wasn’t even myself anymore. The thought made me, quite honestly, sick to my stomach. I choked and coughed until he relaxed the grip a little. Still, I’d been reeled towards him until our bodies were pressed tightly together and I couldn’t see much beyond what was directly beyond his shoulder and the top of his head.

                “Let go, fucker,” I said, squirming and thrashing as best I could, but he tightened his grip again.

                “Stop, sweet, or you’ll hurt yourself. I don’t want you screaming with pain.” I kept wriggling and finally managed to get enough leverage to knee him in the crotch. He hissed and his grip dropped just enough for me to bounce away from him. I grinned.

                “Ha ha, can’t catch me,” I sang, and he lunged at me. I dipped out of the way again, him being considerably slower than me and me prepared by all the training I’d done with Murphy. “Too slow! Come on, I’ve met stuff way bigger than you that was faster than me!” Another lunge, another dive. Finally it seemed I’d gotten him frustrated, though.

                “Hold still,” he roared, and even though I tried to move again, the pain started. I stilled. He showed me his teeth again and stalked towards me, slow, dangerous. I glared at him hard and crossed my arms and then he was touching me again, his hands trailing up and down my sides and my back. “Good boy,” he murmured, at which point I felt his lips on my jaw, his teeth nibbling down my throat, and felt sick again.

                “Fuck you,” I tried, and I shifted from foot to foot, eager to run again, but still the rings were buzzing, keeping me where I stood. He backed me up with his body, towards the bed, and I fell across it hard, my head and my feet both partially hanging off of it, his body a lead weight on mine.

                “Hush. You’re much better to look at when you aren’t talking,” he said, and I wanted to throw him off. The magic was heavy around my hands, tightening into a storm cloud around my head, and I could’ve done it, I could have. It would’ve been easy. I wanted to. I couldn’t. I clenched my eyes shut.

                “I’m not good looking whether I’m quiet or not. You’re the boss of Chicago. You’ve got plenty of people who’d kill to get in your bed, better people than me. Go for one of them, not me. You don’t need me. Marcone and I were never together. I didn’t even like him; I just respected him. We never dated and we never slept together. Don’t do this; let me go.” He laughed, breathless, hot air pouring against my neck where he mouth had settled. I felt his lips moving as he spoke and shuddered at the feel.

                “Is that so? Oh, that is simply too rich. You’re the one thing he never got then, aren’t you? The one thing he couldn’t win. He never was brave enough to _take_ what he wanted; too good for it, I suppose. He always did think that if he couldn’t win something, fair and square, he didn’t deserve it. I never agreed.” I jerked underneath him and he stilled me with a well-placed knee.

                “You knew him?”

                “Certainly. Always got everything he wanted, that man. Never gave in, never met a man he couldn’t beat. But you, you stood against him? You didn’t give him what he wanted? It only makes me want you more. I always lost to him, you know. Even if it’s post mortem, I’m finally _winning_ ,” he hissed, and bit me hard. I yelped, and he smiled around his mouthful. I wasn’t having that, though. Whatever he did to me, I wasn’t giving him that kind of victory. I tilted my head back and stared up at the soft white canopy above my head. I went totally still and slack, let my face go blank and empty. He growled as he felt me drain away and released his teeth’s hold.

                “No, you’re not winning, Alessi. John might be dead, but he’s still the better man. You think taking his house and his businesses and his city will make you him? It won’t. You could never keep this city safe like he did. You take little presents, like these rings, from the bad guys, the real evil in the world, instead of fighting it like he did. He was the Baron in my world and the King in this one and you’ll never be either.” He smacked me hard enough that I felt my jaw creak and my teeth clacked together roughly.

                “What, you think the same as everyone else? That just because he kept kids out of it, that he’d throw money at community organizations, that he was one of the good guys? He wasn’t. He’s no fucking better than I am, alright? Never was; there might be angels out there, I sure as hell don’t know, but he wasn’t one of them. He ran guns and drugs and he killed and he hurt and he did it all with that cold fucking stare on his face. Just business, right? That was his thing, and everything that got in the way was bad for business. He’d get rid of all that like it was nothing. Yet you goddamn hate me for doing the same shit.” He shoved off of me and started pacing, a penned up animal. I sat up, my ribs aching where he’d been laying on me.

                “I know; I never said he was a saint. I sure as hell never said I liked him, or what he did, or what he stood for. I knew he was probably the best of a bad situation, though; not a great man, but he kept innocent people out of it when he could. That’s why I never opposed him, at least not on this front. You know what I’ve always really wanted though, Alessi? For people like him to not be necessary, for the city to not have that darkness that needs somebody to keep it in check and away from the people who don’t need to see it. But if that’s not going to happen, I’d rather have him in power than you any day.” And then he was kneeling in front of me, his hands wrapped around my throat, not squeezing, but very obviously there.

                “You sure you weren’t fucking him, darling? Sure as hell sounds like you liked sucking his dick. You don’t seem to get it, though. He’s dead, and Chicago is mine now. So are you, and if you don’t want that skinny little neck of yours broken, you need to start realizing it.” I shook my head and his hands followed.

                “You can demand as much obedience as you want, but you’re not going to break me with a little pain,” I said, wiggling the chained fingers at him, listening to the soft clink of them, feeling the distant buzz start up once again. “I learned everything I know with pain, and in the process, I learned how to deal with it. Hurting me won’t break me. I might have to listen to direct commands for now, Alessi, but it won’t last. Neither will your hold on the city.” I felt him squeezing a little and took a deep breath, ready to hold it just in case, but he didn’t go any tighter.

                “You don’t care much about your life, do you? You must not. It’s… hell, I don’t want to fucking kill you,” he said, letting go and stepping back a little, his head in his hands. “I don’t. I don’t want to hurt you either. Never did, never have.” I snorted.

                “But I make it hard, right? Don’t worry, I’ve heard it before. You’re still not going to let me go, though.” He shook his head.

                “No, I’m not. I’m keeping you. But what I was doing? I’m not… only if you want. You’ve got permission to… to hit me, if I try. Don’t talk about Marcone anymore though. He’s dead and that’s how it’s staying. This is my city and you’re mine too. I’ve got a meeting in a few hours, and I want you there. I’ll come get you before it’s time. And you’re having dinner with me tonight, afterwards.” I shrugged, figuring refusing requests like that probably wasn’t worth getting hurt by the rings. I needed to save that for the big deals, I guessed.

                “Whatever, man. Obviously there isn’t much I can do about it.” And then he left. I flipped around and sprawled onto the bed. My hand felt far heavier than it ever had before. I still missed John; for all he’d done, for all he’d thrown contracts at me, he’d never done, or even acted like he might do, anything like this.

* * *

 

Marcone’s POV

                It had been a necessity, the events I’d weaved. I’d smelled betrayal in the air, the beginnings of a coup, but I had no idea of the perpetrator. I needed to be out of the way so whoever it was would reveal themselves in the ensuing battle, and I suppose it had worked. I hadn’t expected Alessi, however; he’d always seemed loyal to me. Even Hendricks had been surprised. Necessity or not, however, I hadn’t particularly wanted to do it, most certainly not the way we had. We had not informed anyone else of what we were planning, not even Ms. Gard, although we’d contracted outside help in order to work out the fake bodies and the crash. Hendricks gave me a small smile from the other side of the small hotel room we’d paid for to hide away until the time came when we could reemerge.

                “Just a few more days, Boss,” he said, and I nodded.

                “Indeed. I’m sure Ms. Gard will be pleased to see you.” He rolled his eyes.

                “She’s going to kill me for not telling her, more like. And don’t act like I don’t know why you’re so upset, Boss. I don’t think Alessi will hurt him, at least not in the time we’ll be gone.”

                “Perhaps not physically, but who’s to say what he’s doing to him otherwise? Of course it worries me.”

                “Dresden can take care of himself, Boss. Nothing’s going to get done to him that he doesn’t want to happen. Alessi’s probably getting his ass kicked as we speak, if he’s trying anything.” I smiled and stretched out on the tatty bed.

                “Surely,” I said, imagining it distantly and fighting back laughter. Harry truly was a strong man, always had been, and with his magic he could, at times, seem nigh on undefeatable. “I still think he would’ve been better to ask for help in regards to the accident.” Hendricks huffed and shook his head.

                “You know he wouldn’t have been, Boss. If he refused to help, he’d know the plan anyway and someone could’ve figured it out. Besides, he didn’t pick up on the fact that anything was wrong when he saw the bodies, like you figured he would.” I was still curious about that; why hadn’t he noticed? The man we’d gone to was good, yes, but I couldn’t imagine anyone good enough to fool Harry in regards to magic.                        

                “Yes, yes. How do you think Alessi managed to get Harry under his thumb, by the way?” Hendricks shrugged.

                “Threatened his friends or his family or something, probably. Whatever it was, though, it’s not going to keep him docile for long. He’s too clever, and people underestimate him too much.” I smiled.

                “Family, Mr. Hendricks? Have you discovered something and not told me of it?” He cocked his head.

                “What? Oh, nah. I meant foster family; hell, maybe Alessi managed to get a hold of the records we couldn’t or something, I don’t know. He’s got to have some of that out there that he cares about, anyway.” I nodded.

                “You know, perhaps now would be a good time to look into it. After all, we’re both legally dead, and I must say it’s far easier to find things out when you’re a ghost.” Hendricks nodded.

                “Yeah, alright. I know a few people in the adoption agency. I figure they’ll probably be a little more forthcoming now that we’re out of the business.” I couldn’t hold back my smile; would we finally find out something about the man’s past, beyond the fact that he was an orphaned Wizard? I almost couldn’t believe it, it had been so long in the making. I gestured at Hendricks to carry on and closed my eyes, deciding to take a quick nap whilst he worked.

                Worried though I was, being “dead” was really quite relaxing; all the stress and all the problems that generally followed me about became null, and instead I could live as a normal human being for a period. I could sleep in hotel rooms and watch daytime television. I could read a book without interruption. Hell, I even enjoyed being able to walk around in my socks rather than being constantly confined to leather shoes. Of course, the ability to wear t-shirts and jeans, all old and faded and washed out, was quite pleasant too. Perhaps I would look into Hendricks’ and Gard’s suggestions for vacations a bit more often, once I was in the public eye again.

                I drifted easily off into sleep for perhaps two hours, at which point Hendricks woke me up, a pale smile dusting his face.

                “I got a name, Boss.” I jolted upright.

                “Who?”

                “Justin DuMorne. First guardian he went to that kept him for over a year.” I blinked.

                “My god, really? His father died when he was but six, correct? At what age did Mr. DuMorne collect him?”

                “Ten, or thereabouts. Apparently he had a lot of behavioral issues. Really freaked the parents out, from what my contact said. According to her, all the families had basically the same reasons. Didn’t talk much, didn’t get along with any other kids that might’ve been in the house or at whatever school he went to, sometimes refused to eat, hid in his room practicing magic tricks, like the sleight of hand kind, not the Wizard kind, all that kind of thing. And of course there were a couple he was removed from because of abuse allegations, but not as many as you might expect given how many homes he bounced between. Later, though, the shifts between families started accelerating, and they started claiming that weird stuff would happen around him, like, electrics blowing out, or minor fires, all that kind of thing. A little while after that was when DuMorne came in the picture, though, so I figure he was probably a Wizard. Might even be the one who trained him.” I nodded.

                “And are there any further records, after DuMorne?”

                “Nope. He never went back in the system after that.”

                “Could we assume, then, that he was with that man until adulthood?” Hendricks shrugged.

                “I’d have to look into it more to say for sure, but yeah, I guess. I mean, his case worker never said anything about maltreatment, so it seems like everything was fine. DuMorne even adopted another kid about three years later, a girl named Elaine Mallory, same age as Dresden.” I nodded.

                “I wonder, why did Harry not change his last name, or at least start carrying the name DuMorne in addition to his own? It seems a bit odd.” Hendricks shrugged.

                “I assume the whole headstrong thing probably isn’t a new phenomenon with him. I’d guess and say that’s the reason.” I laughed, soft, agreeable.

                “Indeed. Look into the man, then, and the girl.” He nodded, and as he did so, I flicked on the television and watched a mindless game show, sometimes actually having to resist yelling answers at the people on the screen. On second thought, perhaps I do need to remain a bit busier while in this state. I began going through the plans to depose Alessi and take my city back in my head, careful, making certain that they were as foolproof as Nathan and I believed. They were.

                “Boss, I don’t know if you’re going to like this,” he said, and I sighed. Of course I wouldn’t; Harry was involved, after all. Nothing was simple with that man.

                “What is it? Did you not find anything?” He shook his head.

                “I found enough. DuMorne’s dead, Boss.”

                “Since when? Was it recent?” He shook his head.

                “No. The death certificate is dated the year Dresden would’ve turned sixteen. There was a house fire, a bad one, and most of the articles cite Dresden as the sole suspect. According to the papers, Elaine and DuMorne died. Dresden was found about two weeks later, bruised and cut, but he didn’t claim it was from the fire. Actually, he didn’t claim anything; all I can find say he didn’t speak on the matter, no matter how much he was questioned. Apparently a week after that, he escaped from his jail cell and was never recaptured.” I couldn’t believe it, honestly. Harry, a fugitive? It didn’t fit. Harry as a murderer was equally impossible. He couldn’t have been the true culprit.

                “The case is still open?”

                “Yeah, but it’s long cold, obviously. Hasn’t been mentioned in years.”

                “If this is true, then how has Harry gotten work with SI as a consultant? Don’t they do background checks?”

                “All the papers are referring to him as Harry DuMorne. I assume this is why he changed his name back to Dresden. That’s probably why he’s coming up clean.” I shook my head; all of this was unbelievable.

                “He didn’t do it, and if he did, he’s got a damn good reason for it.” Hendricks shrugged.

                “I don’t know, Boss. When you think about it, no matter how long we’ve known him, we don’t know much _about_ him. We’ve seen him violent.” I set my jaw and gave him a hard stare.

                “No, Nathan. I’ve seen his soul; he’s no killer.”

                “People can change, Boss. Maybe it’s guilt for that that makes him do what he does now.”

                “I won’t believe it unless I hear it from his own lips. We’ve both met plenty of murderers, Nathan. We’ve committed the act ourselves more than once. Harry Dresden is no murderer.”

                “I’ll keep digging, Boss.” I nodded, went back to the game shows, and after another hour, he’d dug up another piece. “Mallory isn’t dead,” he said, so sudden that I might’ve jumped a bit.

                “What?”

                “The girl, Mallory. She’s alive, living in California, running her own PI business.”

                “Is that on a website, Mr. Hendricks?”

                “Yeah, but she’s got herself listed as a specialist in the supernatural too; I’m going to guess she hired someone to make it.”

                “I would assume so, if she’s honest about her skills. Does she have a number listed?” Hendricks nodded. I picked up the hotel’s phone, and he sighed, reading it off for me with ease. It rang twice, and a feminine voice answered promptly.

                “Mallory Detecting, Elaine Mallory speaking. I specialize in cases of the paranormal, how can I be of assistance?”

                “Ms. Mallory? My name is John Marcone. I’m calling in regards to Harry Dresden.” Silence.

                “I don’t know anyone by that name.” I sighed.

                “Please don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be, Ms. Mallory. I don’t want to hurt either of you; Harry is quite important to me. I simply want to get a few facts straight.”

                “If he’s gotten into enough trouble that you’re calling me to help him, there probably isn’t much that can be done. He doesn’t call unless it’s gotten bad. End of the world bad, generally, and sometimes not even then.”

                “And why is that, Ms. Mallory? After all, you are his foster sister.” More silence.

                “I won’t ask how you know, but I will tell you that if it doesn’t stay quiet, I can do a hell of a lot of damage with a voice and a name. It’d be dangerous, if he called me much. I’m supposed to be dead, which you probably know if you know who I am, and if certain people find out otherwise, a lot of shit would go down that neither he nor I want.” I nodded, understanding; I wasn’t making this call to get either of them into trouble.

                “Alright. However, he is in no trouble currently that he can’t handle with only minimal assistance. That is not why I’m calling. Rather, it’s about a particular incidence that occurred when he was sixteen, one which, in fact, was reported to have resulted in your death.” The phone line cracked angrily, but she shortly got it under control. Certainly a Wizard, then.

                “You want to know about DuMorne.”

                “Indeed. Harry’s past has remained quite elusive, you understand; I’ll get a tidbit only to find it leading to a dead end. You’re the most recent in a string of promising leads.” She chuckled.

                “Yeah, well, it’s hidden for a good reason. I don’t want to remember that time, and I’m sure as hell that he doesn’t either. Still, I won’t leave you totally high and dry; I figure you wouldn’t be going this far if it wasn’t for a pretty good reason. Harry did start the fire, and DuMorne did burn. I only barely got out. He did it for a good reason, though. He was hurting us, badly; he had me under Thrall, and he almost got Harry, but he ran. He stayed away for about six months, then came back and burned the place. I never asked where he was for that time or what he did, and he never told me. That’s the basics and that’s all you need to know.”

                “Wait, please; he was abusive? How so?” She laughed.

                “Yeah, he was abusive, if you want to call it that. It doesn’t matter now, though. He and I, we both lived through it. I’ve done things since then that I’m not proud of, and Harry has too. We both made some bad deals. I’ve hurt him, and he’s hurt me, but we’re… we lived through everything together, experienced everything together, and I love him, I do. He loves me too; he helps keep me hidden. The past is the past, and you’re going to need to remember that. If you start digging it up, don’t be surprised if he lashes out.” And then she hung up the phone, leaving me listening to a dial tone. Hendricks raised an eyebrow.

                “Not very helpful, I’ll gather?”

                “He was abusive, that’s about all I can figure out.” Hendricks sighed.

                “Of course. You do know how many pieces to this puzzle we’re still missing, right? Hell, there’s still at least two years totally unaccounted for, if you want to believe him when he says he moved to Chicago at eighteen, and of course all the explanatory chunks surrounding that fire and the girl.”

                “Nathan, it’s Harry Dresden. I’d be far more surprised if we got a simple answer.” He looked terribly pained for a moment, but then he shook his head and let out a quick, low laugh.

                “If you weren’t telling the truth that would probably be pretty damn upsetting. Couldn’t you have picked someone easier?” I didn’t honestly have a sufficiently clever response to that, and so instead I just allowed a small, enigmatic smile to pass across my lips. He just rolled his eyes; he knew me well enough to know the reason.

                “Continue looking, if you like. I’m sure we’ll figure it out eventually, yes? We always do.” He nodded, and with that I lay back on the bed again, watched my game show, and listed off into a light sleep.   

* * *

 

Harry’s POV

                I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t seem to manage. The bed was comfortable, the room was pretty, but sleep was distant and intangible. I guess it was nerves. Whatever; it’s probably a good thing that I never did, anyway, because I felt a familiar tugging from the back of my mind, gentle but distant. Elaine; she was accessing our bond, the one we’d made so many years before, and she never did that if it wasn’t important. I let her in without a second thought, but all I got was that she really, really wanted me to call her. I blinked slowly as I let the bond leak closed again and stood up, wandering towards the door, wondering if leaving the room would count as disobedient enough to set the rings to aching.

                Or, actually, does it really count as wondering when you only do it for, like, five seconds? I guess not; anyway, the point is, I pretty much just stood up and opened the door, then walked out. The rings stayed blessedly dormant about my fingers, so I wandered around and finally came across a room with a phone that I hoped would tolerate me long enough that I could make my call. Of course, as soon as I picked it up, the room was much more occupied, but still.

                I didn’t recognize the guy, but he had that particular dim look on his face that made me think “goon” right off the bat. I toodled my fingers at him and he glared.

                “The boss says you ain’t allowed to call nobody.” I pursed my lips at him and put my hands on his hips.

                “Well, that’s rude of him. I might start to think I’m a prisoner here if I don’t get a few more privileges.” The guy didn’t seem to get the joke because he just kind of stared at me. I sighed. “Look, I’m not calling the cops or anything; I’m not an idiot, and I don’t particularly want them ending up dead. I just want to call my old foster sister, okay? She lives in California, so I don’t think she’s going to be able to do all that much.” The guy shifted a little, looking down at his feet.

                “Johnny trusted you,” he murmured, and I shrugged.

                “I don’t know if he did or not. Probably he thought about killing me before too; he’d be stupid if he didn’t. He never did this to me, though. Even if he did think about it, which, again, he probably did.” The guy smiled, a little, the look of it odd on his stony face.

                “I ain’t gettin’ dead for you either way. A little leeway’s probably allowed, though. Gimme the phone and the number. I’ll make sure you’re tellin’ the truth, then you can talk to her however much you want.” I nodded, figuring that was probably the best I was going to get, handed him the phone, and called out the number. He dialed it as I spoke, I heard it ring, and finally I heard Elaine pick up.

                “Hello? Who is this?” The guy gave a name and said he was calling on behalf of Harry Dresden, apparently eloquent when he wanted to be, and whatever reply Elaine gave to that was obviously acceptable because he handed me the phone.

                “Hey, Elaine,” I said, and she cursed once, harsh.

                “Christ, Dresden, what the hell’s going on with you? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

                “What? I mean, kind of, but it’s nothing I can’t deal with. What’s this about anyway? You don’t normally want me to get in touch unless shit hath hitteth the fan majorly.” She snorted.

                “I don’t know if that’s what happened or not. I got a call asking about you and me; our past, you know? DuMorne. They knew who I was to you, and they knew about the fire.” I froze.

                “Oh, Hell’s Bells. Did they give a name?”

                “Yeah. John Marcone; I mean, he didn’t sound dangerous, didn’t sound angry. I didn’t give him much, though, just enough that I could get off the phone without setting off any alarm bells.” I froze, I can admit it.

                “That can’t be right; whoever made that call had to be lying. John’s dead, has been for weeks.” I tried to sound all cool and detached, but I don’t think I quite managed.

                “Then I was talking to a ghost. He’s the Baron of Chicago, Harry, I know his voice and I know it’s the one I heard.”

                “I saw the bodies! I felt death on them. They’re gone; it’s not like there’s nothing out there that can imitate a voice, Elaine.” She growled and I could tell she was gearing up to argue.

                “Did you check them with your Sight?”

                “Of course I didn’t, Elaine. You think I want to see that for the rest of my life? I didn’t exactly like them, but that’s not what I want to remember about them.”

                “Then they still could’ve been faked and you know it; it’s more difficult, but it could’ve been done. We’ve done it, if not to the extent that we left Death on one. I’ll give you the number, alright?”

                “Fine,” I sighed back; at least I’d be able to call whoever had the balls to imitate Marcone and deal with it.

                “Bad call?” the guy asked, and I shook my head.

                “Nah, fine. We argue all the time; nothing to worry about.” I thought for a moment about giving him the new number to call, but for some reason… if he heard John’s voice on the other end, whether it was really John or not, I didn’t want to know how he’d react. I decided to wait until it was dark and the house was asleep, and even let the guy escort me back to my bedroom.

                “I’m sorry,” he said, soft, upon arriving. “Johnny would have my head on a pike for this. I gotta keep a job though, you know? And the new boss wants you. I’m sorry.” I shrugged.

                “No hard feelings. You didn’t give the order to keep me here, and Stars, you’re bending the rules for me, so, hey. I can’t complain about you too much. Anyway, get out of here, before Alessi comes by and gets pissy.” He nodded but didn’t look at me as he left. I lay back on the bed again and considered sleep again, although it seemed as though it was planning on being just as stubbornly distant as before. I wondered if I’d ever be able to fall asleep in that bed. At that point, I was leaning very heavily towards “no way in hell”.

* * *

 

                I was laying there for maybe an hour longer before Alessi came in like a storm cloud, all tight muscle and slicked hair and silk suit. I waved at him with my bejeweled hand, showing off the reduced wiggle of my fingers mostly because I had a deep and instinctual desire to remind the man that I was in no way there because I wanted to be. He didn’t speak, instead just grabbing me by the arm and jerking me off the bed, although his fingers quickly shifted to their preferred position around the chain.

                “Aw, your business buddies are here already? Too bad; I kind of wanted a nap.”

                “You’ll have plenty of time for sleeping tonight after dinner. As it stands, my associates very much want to meet you, having heard quite a lot about you over the years.” I snorted.

                “We’re back to the proper speech now? You’re hurting my feelings,” I told him, fluttering my eyelashes at him as best I could. He flashed a quick half smile but it faded quickly with a shake of his head.

                “Be polite in there; that’s an order. You offend them, you and I are going to have yet another problem.” I bit my tongue to keep from talking back as he led me into a full office, one with a long table with every chair full except for two at the head. He put a hand on my hip (I felt like crawling out of my skin at the touch; why did he want me so badly anyway? It wasn’t like I had any standing in his world, and I could pretty well assume he had little standing in mine) and led me to one of the chairs. He then pulled it out for me and helped me sit, and I got a sudden, deep understanding for why stuff like that pissed Murphy off so much. The meeting didn’t start until after he took the seat beside me, though.

                “Mr. Alessi,” the nearest man greeted, “Mr. Dresden. I presume you both know what we’re here to discuss?”

                “Mr. Marcone’s former holdings, yes; obviously, I’m willing to divide them fairly, but there are of course certain territories I would like to claim for myself.” I gritted my teeth and the ring shocked me once.

                “Of course,” the same man said, “I suppose you should inform us of these territories now, and if any of us have any objections we will state them now.”

                “I’ll be keeping a ten mile radius around this property, for protection, in addition to the outer ten miles about the city, so that I have a good base and a good rim of power. I will also maintain control of all tourist areas, and other such populated regions such as the Loop.” The men nodded, apparently having no objections to that. “Harry, is there anything you’d like to keep?”

                “The schools, including the colleges.”

                “No,” one man said, quick, efficient, and I let my eyebrows go up.

                “Look, none of you have any business being near any of the elementary-through-high schools, alright? Same with the colleges, and besides that, my friends look after the University of Chicago. If any of you go messing around there, there’s a decent chance that it’ll bite you in the ass, possibly literally.” Alessi gave me a sharp look.

                “Harry, we’ve got to be reasonable with-,” I cut him off even though it burned.

                “No. You keep saying you’re the boss, why don’t you act like it? It was all John’s property, meaning now it’s all yours.”

                “Ruling with iron wouldn’t keep me in power long, Harry,” he tried, and I shrugged.

                “Give them Undertown, then.” The room went quiet and I let myself give a slight, distant smile.

                “Undertown?”

                “Yeah. You know, the city under the city. All the unused subway lines, and the old Mafia tunnels from prohibition, and various other things that have dug down there and made a home. A lot of people, and other stuff, live down there, and there’s plenty for them to split.” Alessi smirked, tight, and let his eyes narrow just so.

                “You heard him, then. You’re all now the proud owners of Undertown.” They fell into an uproar, demanding confirmation that it even existed, that there’d even be markets down there. I shrugged.

                “I could show you, obviously. I know a few things that like to have parties down there. But, tomorrow. It’s dangerous at night.” Alessi nodded.

                “That sounds fine, doesn’t it, men?” Reluctant approval trickled through the room, and Alessi stood. “Good; now, as that has been dealt with far more expediently than I thought, why don’t you and I have dinner, Harry?” I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. I followed him into the dining room and sat my ass down at the table, shoveled food into my face mechanically, drank what he gave me to drank, and didn’t speak unless I felt as if I had to. This obviously bothered him, somewhat, but he didn’t say much about it. Afterwards, he followed me back up to that bedroom and gave me a pair of too-big pajamas.

                I changed quickly, without complaint or show, and I assume he did the same, although I didn’t exactly look. The only thing I recognized was him getting into the bed beside me, his arm draping across my midsection and pulling me tightly against his chest. I might’ve slept an hour that night, considering the damned rings kept burning and stinging me throughout the night because of my desire to pull away. It did at least give me time to think about out to get the things off, which, come to think of it, probably had something to do with the stinging and burning too. Oh well; I’d figure it all out, get myself loose, soon enough.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be up this Friday instead of next Wednesday; I'm going out of town next week, and I'm afraid that'll be the only time I'll have to get it up. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this one!

                The sun was maybe an hour or two off from rising when I crept from the bed and down to where the phone had been. No one barged in on me and I grinned; shitty security, I guessed, and that made me muffle laughter into my arm as I dialed the number Elaine had given me. It rang three or four times before someone, groggy, picked up the phone and oh god that was Hendricks it sounded like Hendricks. My voice caught in my throat.

                “Oh, Hell’s Bells. Who the hell are you?” I hissed, and was met with a gasp.

                “Fuck,” the Hendricks-but-not voice snarled. “How the hell…” I laughed.

                “Your master plan involved calling someone who both knows and cares about me, asking about very personal matters, and expecting her not to fucking contact me; it wasn’t that bright. Now, I’ve got news for you; John and Nathan are dead. You might want to pick up some better fucking disguises,” I said, and by the end of it I was hissing, angrier than I figured I’d be.

                “No, damn it, Dresden, we’re not. Boss, boss, wake the hell up. Dresden knows; he’s on the line.” I heard someone jolt, the sound of feet on the floor, heard the phone getting transferred.

                “Harry?” he asked, and I growled, quiet as I could manage.

                “Don’t call me that. Who are you?” A pause.

                “You know who I am. I faked it, Mr. Dresden, to draw out a rat. I’ll be back shortly in order to exterminate said rat, so long as you have not ruined my plan by calling from my home. How is our darling Alessi, by the way?”

                “He’s in bed asleep, unless he’s woken up since I left, at which point I’m fucked anyway, so what the hell does it matter? Prove you’re him. I saw the bodies, alright? They were covered in death, I felt it, so unless someone is damn good or found some fucking identical twins, those were them.” He fell silent for another moment.

                “That’s how he fooled you, then. Interesting. Might I ask what I can do to prove who I am to you?” I thought about it, thought about things he’d be the only one to know, things only he’d seen.

                “Answer some questions for me.”

                “Certainly,” he said, and damn it, he didn’t even sound tired, the bastard; obviously whoever this was knew Marcone well, in life.

                “What’s the Archive’s name and where did you meet her?”

                “Her name is Ivy, and my first encounter with her occurred while I was kidnapped by the Order of the Blackened Denarius, led by Nicodemus Archleone. The both of us were tortured and my most noticeable injury was a torn ear.” I nodded even though it would’ve been invisible to him.

                “How did you break into my office when I found you there with a contract not long after we met?”

                “Jimmied the lock with a knife. It was a weak lock to begin with and I believe I broke it in the process, thus, I assume, how you know how I did it.” Oh, he was good. I thought a little harder and decided on a question that would prove he was who he said he was, which, while making me feel really damn stupid for not noticing anything off with the bodies, would make me confusingly happy otherwise.

                “Who is Amanda?” Silence. Gotcha. Except for I didn’t, because then he spoke again.

                “Amanda is the root of my rule about children. Before my takeover, I was shot at by Marco Vargassi, but he missed and hit a little girl named Amanda instead. She, however, fell into a coma rather than dying. I didn’t know this for years, instead thinking her dead, but then I discovered that the Vargassi’s covered it up to prevent charges. Her mother, Helen Beckett, doesn’t know either. I’ve been visiting her since I discovered the fact that she still lived.” I froze.

                “Damn it. Okay. Okay. Who did you go to, for those models?” He gave me a name I didn’t recognize but that I’d surely have to look into someday soon. “I’m still not going to buy this totally until I see the two of you for myself. There aren’t many people out there than can pull off something that good and I… Stars. When are you coming back?” I could just imagine his smirk.

                “You sound eager.”

                “Yeah, well, you would be too if you were getting snuggled by a bear. And my hand hurts.” Another bout of silence filled the air.

                “Alessi is…,” I sighed.

                “Yeah. Apparently he, and also half of your organization, at least, thought you and me had a thing. And, at some point in this thinking, he has decided that he would like to have that thing with me instead, so, here I am, stuck in your house with some random guy I’ve never seen in my life before your funeral, and I haven’t been out of touch long enough for any of my friends to get curious about where I am. I had to sneak down to the phone just to make this call.”

                “How did you get this number, by the way?”

                “Elaine and I have, like, a connection thing we made in our heads. We don’t use it unless there’s an emergency, and she told me to call her through it, so, I went down here today and one of your old people helped me out. Anyway, she gave me this number. I didn’t want to make this call with anyone around, though. I’m going to warn you now that he might have some kind of magical defense somewhere, though; at the least he knows Arianna Ortega, one of the Red Court nobles I’ve managed to piss off over the years, and she gave him a set of rings he’s using on me. I can’t disobey any direct orders he gives me without some pretty terrible pain.” He cursed, low, almost feral.

                “Tomorrow. Nathan and I will move the plans forward. Get back to wherever you were before you get yourself caught.”

                “Yeah, okay. Be careful, I guess,” I said, and hung up the phone. For once, though, everything went perfectly; I made it back into the room and the bed without waking him, and even managed to fall asleep once I did. My hand didn’t even hurt so much anymore.

                After all, John and Hendricks were alive. Breathing. Coming to take the city back. Okay. I smiled. Alessi put his arm back around me again, tight, the span of his hand wide across my belly, and it fell away just as quickly as it had come.

* * *

 

                I awoke the next morning to yelling. And fighting; there was also a lot of fighting. I groaned and separated myself very slowly from my sleep.

                “Get up, Alessi,” someone said, voice gruff, and I recognized it distantly as Marcone. That had me jolting alive again, Alessi’s touch falling from me as I stumbled up to my feet. “Harry,” he said, gun in his hand, and he flicked it behind himself and Hendricks. I took it as meaning he wanted me to go there, but I shook my head.

                “Don’t kill him. I don’t know if anyone else can take these damn rings off. Not to mention the fact that if I’m behind you and he tells me to get a shot in, I don’t know how long I can hold out against doing it. I’d rather you be able to see me getting ready to do it.” Alessi laughed.

                “He’s right, Johnny. He’s mine now, you see; he’ll do what I tell him,” he stated, taking me softly by my ringed hand. I jerked it, but he just clenched his fist tightly around it. “I liked you far better dead, by the way. Why the change?”

                “I don’t tolerate people moving against me, Alessi. Never would’ve suspected you, by the way; you’re a fine actor.” The gun stayed leveled at the man’s head, John’s hand never wavering. He laughed.

                “I never moved against you, John. No, when you died, I was simply the one who managed to take advantage. You were looked for Ponzi, but he and his backers are all long gone.” He nodded.

                “Clever, I suppose. Now, however, it seems you and I are at something of an impasse. Why don’t you let Harry take those rings off and leave, hm? None of this is his concern.” Obviously, this was when the vice appeared around my arm again and yanked me sideways across the bed once more. I might’ve yelped, but that doesn’t really sound like me, so probably I let out a manly battle cry. I jerked and tried to roll away, of course, but then his fingers appeared around my neck again and I froze.

                “This old song and dance again? Come on, sweetie, I thought we’d moved passed this,” I said, fluttering my eyelashes up at him and doing my damndest to relax against the hold. His fingers twitched and I saw Johnny tensing, his finger stroking the trigger he held softly.

                “Shut up,” he told me, “both of you. I told you, Johnny, I won him; I’m not letting him go. I was the one smart enough to get him instead of just fucking thinking about it, building a place to keep him.” What? I gave them both a confused glance, tried to speak, and gagged on the words as the rings began to smart again.

                “Ngh,” I finally managed, but from there I was just cut off completely, relegated into silence. Hendricks took a step closer, as if he was going to grab me and run off or something, but Alessi shook his head and _squeezed,_ my air disappearing suddenly, terrifying me to my core. I thrashed and jerked, but he just squeezed even tighter and I had to go still or risk getting my damn neck snapped. He loosened the grip enough that I could get in at least a little air once I went still, and I realized suddenly that I was pretty much helpless, just then. And I was having to rely on John Marcone, of all people, to keep me from dying there. I’d have cursed if I could’ve.

                “What are you doing to him?” Marcone asked, hissed, and I gritted my teeth hard so I wouldn’t talk, try to answer. Alessi let go of my neck (thank God) and instead picked up my wrist and brandished the rings.

                “Pretty, aren’t they?” Understanding dawned on John’s face as he finally realized what I’d meant by rings, what they actually did, and I was pretty sure bullets were about to be an issue, but then Alessi turned his attention to me again. “Harry, honey, you can speak again. I want you to bring these two down to the basement, alright? Keep them there for me; I’ll follow once I’m dressed.” I snarled and rocked up to my feet, the sudden rush of blood making me waver just a smidge.

                “Fuck off,” I said, but then it started and I doubled over with the agony of it.

                “He still hasn’t learned, you see,” Alessi said, “but his longest refusal to date has been seven minutes. I’d suggest leaving now.” Shit, that was the longest? It had sure as hell felt like more time than that. I bit at my lips and curled tightly towards my knees.

                “Hell’s Bells, John, listen to him, or shoot me, or something. Don’t just stand there; I don’t want to hurt you.” He didn’t do anything. It might’ve been five minutes before I was lunging at Hendricks, ‘fuego’ on my lips. He dived out of the way and swore loudly.

                “Don’t kill them, Harry; just get them to the basement.” I switched to forzare, over and over, herding them out the door and towards the stairs.

                “Harry, stop this,” Marcone said, wincing as another spell struck him and he stumbled backwards again. I gritted my teeth.

                “I would if I could, okay? I told you to shoot me. Do it now; in the leg or something. If I can’t walk I can’t do this.” He raised his chin defiantly, instead just starting to walk towards and then down the stairs on his own. Hendricks followed his lead and I trailed along behind them. “I’m sorry,” I said, and he nodded.

                “I know. Let me see your hand. Perhaps I can remove the damned things.” I let him see them thoughtlessly, but a single touch had me crying out. He dropped my fingers immediately.

                “Obviously not. You wanna tell me what he meant about ‘building a place’ by the way?” Hendricks flinched, but John just looked at me.

                “I’m sure you’ll see soon enough.” I raised my eyebrows and I would’ve said more, would’ve tried to find a way out, but Alessi was there, directing us down a hallway, down another flight of stairs (how many basements does one guy need, by the way?) and that’s when I started to feel it, the magic, the wards. I didn’t think much of it until I saw an iron door, though, one with runes carved into the frame. Alessi opened it and shoved all three of us inside (not, of course, before taking their guns and plucking about three knives from John’s person). The wards on the door flamed with color, and the air between Alessi and myself seemed to very suddenly solidify into a wall. I gaped at the man, and he smiled almost sadly.

                “It’s truly a shame that I have to do this, Harry, but I’m afraid I can’t help but think you had something to do with this attack on me. I’ll return for you in a few days, after the fools who let them in have been dealt with. Ah, and as for punishment… do as those two tell you whilst I’m gone; follow any order as long as it will not result in harm coming to me.” A moment of revulsion, anger, fought its way to the surface, but at the throbbing I shoved it away, back into the corner of my head where it currently belonged. He slammed the door. The sheer frustration made me scream, and, given that that didn’t do much, I began pacing instead.

                “Harry,” Marcone tried, but I felt a rumbly noise escape from my throat just after. Finally, though, I made my way to the corner of the room (it was mostly bare, maybe the size of my apartment’s living room, with a soft carpet) and sat there.

                “Christ,” Hendricks grumbled, rubbing his head softly, and I settled my head onto my knees before I spoke.

                “Do you two want to tell me why you thought it was a good fucking idea to march in here with just you two and attempt a second hostile takeover?”

                “It seemed the best idea, Harry, and it isn’t as though my people weren’t on my side as soon as they saw me. I simply didn’t know he had you so thoroughly under his thumb,” he said, sounding a little frustrated himself, and I lifted my head to glare at him.      

                “I told you about the rings on the phone, you dumbass,” I hissed, and he sighed.

                “Because I was meant to know they gave him that much control?”

                “Fuck you; if they didn’t, do you really think I’d be here? Actually, I wouldn’t be here anyway if not for you, Johnny boy; without all those rumors that you had me in your pocket, he wouldn’t have wanted me to begin with.” He bared his teeth and swept over to where I sat, towering over me like he had any right to be upset.

                I mean, it wasn’t like I was lying; it was his fault. He could’ve stopped the rumors, if he didn’t find it so amusing. I rocked up to my feet to correct the issue of his towering, but he just settled a hand against my chest and pushed me hard against the wall.

                “According to you, the rumors were suggesting you were in my bed more than my pocket, Dresden. You think I started that? I believe you might’ve had more to do with it, don’t you think? Barging into my offices at all hours of the day and night, parading into my home whenever you felt you had to speak with me, talking to me as you do. I don’t let people get away with that.” I swept out a leg to throw him off balance and get him off of me, at which point I danced over to the other side of the room. Hendricks continued to watch, shock and some twisted kind of amusement warring on his face.

                “And I’m sure it would’ve been impossible for you to stop them, huh? One look from you and they’d have shut up.” He swept back over to me, looking every bit the predator in a fancy suit, and clenched his fist into the front of my shirt. I jerked, but he tightened the hold and I stilled for fear of the shirt ripping. I did, after all, like that shirt, and I don’t own many clothes I like. Besides, if he looked like he was going to punch me, I could still duck. Or kick him. Or magic him. It’d be cool, is what I’m trying to say.

                “Keeping them from talking about it doesn’t mean they stop thinking about it. If anything, me being upset enough to quiet them would’ve only cemented them; they’d see it as me trying to protect you, your reputation. You don’t think much, do you?” I laughed, all bitterness, all snapping teeth.

                “Oh, you want to talk thinking, do you? I wonder, what’s running in here with no plan? What’s ignoring me when I give you a free pass to get away from me so I don’t fucking kill you? I’m the one who barges in without a plan, okay? I’m the one who blows the door down. You’re the one who plans, and plans, and then, just to be safe, plans again, then spends some time going over those plans with well-trained allies that have machine guns.” He didn’t say anything, instead gritting his teeth and looking away from me, although he stayed pressed hard against me, keeping me still with well-placed pressure.

                “Boss,” Hendricks said, the shock/amusement combo melting away into a distant kind of worry. “Boss, calm down, okay? Let him go; we need to think of a way out of here.” He didn’t say anything; he was tenser than I’d ever seen him, all of his muscles pulled tight enough that I was sure they’d start aching soon.

                “Obviously he’s gone deaf, Cujo. Probably that car crash catching up to him, don’t you think? I have to wonder, where was the thinking in that one? There’s better ways to draw out a traitor. You bastards made _Gard_ cry. Even Michael showed up to your fucking funeral, Marcone. Michael, and Charity, and she hated your guts. I was-,” I tried, cut myself off, and he laughed.

                “You were what, Dresden? Sad? Did you miss me, sweetheart? Think I’d left you behind?” he asked, almost mocking, something dark in his voice that I’d never actually heard before. I swallowed thickly.

                “You’re the best of a bad situation, Marcone. The bright side to the dark side, if you will. Nothing else; I was upset at how much more violence I was going to see on the streets. I was upset at how many more cases I’d get to correct it. I was upset at how many people were going to die without a reason. Upset for you, though? Hell no.” And I was barely lying even a little bit, I promise.

                After all, I’d just been sad at the lack of familiarity, really. Someone I didn’t know was coming to power. I was… a weird sort of lonely, maybe. I’d lost a good sometimes-ally. It was… a little like I’d feel if Lara died, maybe. I’d have lost a future threat, but at the same time, I’d have lost some security in a dangerous crowd. I’d have lost someone who I knew I could generally convince to work with me, if I had something desirable to give in return.

                And if, when I thought he was dead, I felt kind of like I’d lost a friend, someone closer than sometimes ally, nobody had to know it but me, so long as I kept a brave face on and talked like some mega-badass.

                “You’re lying,” he rumbled, “you’ve got god knows how many tells; you’re an awful liar.” I snorted.

                “I think you’re flattering yourself, Marcone.” He looked like he wanted to shake me, to toss me across the room, to punch me hard, but instead he nipped his own lip once. Finally, he let out a deep, heavy sigh, and he did throw me, just probably not as hard as he wanted to, and only against the wall I was already standing against.

                I laughed and rolled my shoulders carefully, cracked my neck, but stood still where I was, beyond crossing my arms and getting a little bit better balanced. John paced in front of me, taking over the caged animal routine I’d been pulling earlier, and Hendricks looked as if he wanted to comfort him or something. I just raised my chin and tried to feel like I’d won. Finally, though, the man seemed to lose a battle with his own self-control and turned towards me again.

                “I’m flattering myself, hm? As if I don’t have plenty of people willing to do that for me. Tell me the truth,” he said, and oh, hell no, he wasn’t. He wasn’t. The pain was a sudden freight train now that I’d been away from it for a bit. My head thunked against the wall, my back bent at sharp enough angle that I feared it would break, my hand screamed as if it were being cut off.

                “John, damn it, stop. Stop; you’re hurting him, John, look,” Hendricks said, but I didn’t have time to wait on Marcone to stop it. I hit the floor and started talking.

                “I’m barely lying. Just a little, okay? Yeah, I missed you as a little more than that. Almost like a friend,” I hissed, “but I sure as hell see I was mistaken for it.” He looked pained, a little, and came back towards me, crouched in front of me.

                “I’m sorry; I wasn’t thinking. Don’t listen to me anymore, alright? Don’t follow any orders I give you.” I didn’t have to fight to obey that one.

                “You know that’s kind of a paradox, right? Whatever; I think these things are nuanced enough to get the meaning. Thank you, though, for that. Doesn’t mean I’m not pissed at you for all this still, but thank you.” He sighed out something like a laugh.

                “Can we not share the blame?”

                “Nope. It isn’t my fault people are under the continuous assumption that I’m gay for somebody. Or, I guess more accurately, you or Thomas. It’s mostly just been you two. I think Kincaid might’ve gotten it once, but he’s Kincaid; I’m pretty sure he’ll sleep with anything. He actually likes Murphy, though, and I get the feeling that that’s weird for him. Oh, and there was that one time with Michael too, but those were vampires, so they don’t count.” He stared at me. Hendricks swore very softly under his breath and looked ready to start beating his head against the wall.

                “So people just make these assumptions with no reason to from your side?” I shrugged.

                “Kind of. I don’t know why they keep saying I’m with you, but for Thomas, it’s all his fault. He’s the one who kissed me on the top of the head and talked to me like some girl in front of Butters, and he’s the one who forgot to tell people that I was allowed in his apartment, so yeah, I had to break in, and I didn’t want to go to prison, so I pretended that I was his scorned boyfriend; really it’s a testament to how dumb the CPD are, or at least the ones who came to arrest me, because I’m a really bad actor and I was really, terribly over the top. Kincaid, again, is Kincaid; he exudes vibes of ‘I am so having sex with this person’ with pretty much every adult he happens to be around. Michael, I brought him as my date to a vampire party, and, well… you know, I can kind of understand the assumption there, since no one I knew at the time was there, and they were vampires. Thomas was there, though, and he basically offered to let me sleep with his girlfriend, for some reason, and I refused even though she’s really very exceptionally pretty, so that probably didn’t help much either.” He just kept staring at me, as if I were some kind of science experiment gone terribly, terribly wrong.

                Finally, though, he just shook his head and went back to sit by Hendricks again. I straightened up from my place on the floor and got my legs up towards my chest again, just for comfort’s sake, as I looked towards him. He smiled just a touch and shook his head.                

                “What? There isn’t much point in arguing further, is there? I apologize for whatever role I had in getting you stuck here; I assure you that it was far from my intention. So too am I sorry for upsetting you with my actions. That, too, was certainly not what I wanted to do.” He was so damned frustrating; how did he even manage that, going right back to his nonchalant, cold face when just seconds before he’d been ready to hit me? It was annoying, that straight face, and I wondered if he’d think I had a right to punch him once. I figured probably not and decided that it’d be better to just find out where we were, and if there was a way out so that we could go kick Alessi in the dick and I could go home.

                “What is this place anyway? Some kind of panic room?” His smile worried me, but then his smile usually worried me; I couldn’t recall many instances where it had led to anything good for me.

                “I suppose you could call it that.”

                “So there’s some way to get out?”

                “If I had the key, but I’m afraid I don’t. I leave it in my bedroom, you understand, where you and Alessi have been sleeping.” I snorted, because wow. Still, it looked like I was going to have to be the proactive one in this situation. I rocked up to my feet and started walking around the room, hands on the wall, feeling around carefully. “Harry, what the hell are you doing?” I grinned back at him.

                “I know Gard, Johnny, and I know she built this place. She wouldn’t make a regular door the only way out; she’s too clever for that, and she’s a planner, so she would’ve guessed that it might’ve been used as a prison instead of its original intention. I just need to find whatever safeguard she put in, and chances are I can get us out of here.” Something nervous flashed over his face, so quickly that I was almost certain I hadn’t really seen it anyway. In fact, I would’ve been sure I hadn’t, had I not seen the same expression (except with a little more longevity) shoot over Hendricks’.

                Still yet, I figured it was probably nothing; after all, I was known for seeing things in people that weren’t there, at least recently. Or, you know, vice versa. Anyway.

                Admittedly, I had no access to my magic within the room’s wards, but I didn’t need it to do a simple examination like the one I was currently partaking in. I touched the wall lightly, trailing my fingers over it and feeling a delicate, skillful weaving.

                It was thin, I noted, but the weave was done tightly, no holes that I could feel. Probably originally fairy make, but possibly altered. I prodded a little harder and felt some give to it, but not enough that I could just brute force my way out.  I could feel a few runes hidden inside it, as well, probably Gard’s signature. Hell, I even recognized a couple, although most were as foreign to me as the one she’d had me use during the whole fiasco with the Grendelkin.

                I went around the whole room like this, poking, seeking out that one weakness I needed, never finding it, before I realized what that place actually was. I froze.

                “Marcone. This isn’t a panic room, is it? Gard didn’t just think that this might be used as a prison one day, did she? She knew it would be. Maybe for a certain magical pain in your ass, Johnny? Was this the plan for when I got too involved, fucked with your business too much? I gotta say, it’s a good contingency plan; get me down here and lock us in together. You’ve got the key, obviously, or more likely Hendricks does, waiting just outside. From there it’d just be a matter of overpowering me strength wise, which, if you got me in hand to hand, I have no doubt you could do.” He didn’t say anything. I wanted to scream at him, but instead I just turned around and faced him, anger in my eyes. He was silent a while longer, but finally spoke.

                “Are you pretending you didn’t have one for me?” I thought about that, thought for a second that maybe he was right, that I was overreacting to it because I was a threat, after all, we were still on opposite sides no matter how often we reached across party lines, of course I had a plan for him, but then I realized that I didn’t. All the years I’d said and thought that one day it’d be him or me, we’d have to fight each other, and I’d never come up with a plan for that day. It wasn’t even like I didn’t think he was enough of a threat to worry about it, because he was. Next to Murphy, he was probably the toughest Vanilla I’d ever met. I looked away.

                “I’m not pretending.” He seemed to freeze; if I were more dramatic, I’d say that everything did. “It doesn’t matter now anyway, though. I can’t get out of this without my magic, unless you happen to have something made of iron on you and we get lucky enough that this thing is close enough to fairy magic that it works.” He shook his head.

                “It isn’t. I had her make sure of it.” I laughed, feeling probably bitterer than I had the right to.

                “Of course you did. Reminds me a little of one Elaine used on me a few years ago. You should’ve had a sprinkler system installed; drowning works real well in traps like this one.” He narrowed his eyes at me, looked ready to stand again, but Hendricks surreptitiously took the back of his jacket in hand and he settled.

                “I had thought you and Ms. Mallory were important to one another.” I didn’t look him in the face for probably the first time since we met and shared that damn Soul Gaze. I could still feel him getting annoyed at me for it, though, a deep, instinctual kind of annoyance that I always felt from him when I was being stubborn.

                “I’m not the only one who can make bad deals, Marcone. Only difference is, she went to Summer instead of Winter, so she was at least a little smarter about it. She was the Summer emissary and I got chosen as the one for Winter, so yeah, she tried to kill me a couple of times. She came back for me, though, by the end; she’s clever, and she’s dangerous, and she can be venomous, and sometimes I don’t trust her, but usually I do. She’s separated from Summer now anyway.” I shrugged to symbolize that that was the end of it, but obviously Marcone didn’t get that.

                “You went through a lot together, I presume?”

                “Yeah. For a whole three years, she and I were everything to each other. Of course, considering you were asking her about our past, I assume you already know what happened.”  

                “Your foster father was killed.” I laughed.

                “Oh, come on; I know you know more than that. You can say it, it’s alright. Or, well, maybe it isn’t, but it is true.” He raised his chin, apparently newly confident and probably getting annoyed at me again.

                “He died in a house fire that you started, one in which Ms. Mallory was thought to have died as well. From that point, you went on the run, changed your last name back from DuMorne to Dresden.” I crossed my arms and glared at him hard, bit my tongue once by accident before I spoke in reply.

                “My last name was never DuMorne. The papers might’ve called me that, but no one else ever did.”

                “Justin didn’t?” he asked, fake surprise in his voice, and I turned back to the wall, started pacing again.

                “I was lucky if DuMorne called me Harry; him bestowing his surname on me would’ve given me a fucking heart attack. I wasn’t his son, alright? He never gave me the illusion that I was. I was his Apprentice; I was supposed to do what he said and damn well like it. As you can guess, I was never very good at it. He liked messing with dark magic, really dark magic, the kind that stains you. I never really took to it; Elaine was always better, always a little more willing to do what he said to get out of having the shit beaten out of her. He put her under Thrall when we were sixteen, but I never would’ve known if I hadn’t come home early one day. He tried to do the same thing to me, got me down on the ground, had Elaine bind me, but I got loose and hauled ass. He sent He Who Walks Behind after me, and it got me cornered in this gas station. The cashier died. I just barely managed to get away and meet my godmother, who brought me into the Nevernever and offered me the strength to kill him in exchange for my life. I made the deal, and she trained me for about a month. I don’t remember most of it because of the blood loss.

                I did learn, though, and I went back to his house and set the whole damn thing on fire, not honestly thinking too clearly in the process. Then the Council caught me and tried to behead me for it; I’d have died then and there, but a man named Ebenezer McCoy spoke up for me and finished my training on his farm in Missouri. I got full Wizard status at eighteen and moved here. There you go, Marcone, that’s the whole damn story, okay? Now shut the hell up.” Surprisingly enough, he did. I sat down across from them in case they thought of something, and then proceeded to let my own mind wander.

                What were we going to do? We wouldn’t have a chance until Alessi came back, and everything looked like we wouldn’t even have much of one then. The rings would keep me from moving against him for any useful length of time; if I was going to do anything, I needed to get them off. I raised the offending hand towards my face and ran my free fingers over it softly, just feeling the enchantment instead of pulling at it, and as such, it didn’t really cause me anything more than a mild discomfort.

                As I’d already known, it was an old artifact; had I been at home, I probably could’ve looked them up and found something out. It seemed like the main part of the spell was found in the chain, though; everything felt stronger there. I took it between my fingers and ran it through, questing, and did actually manage to find the link where the spell was tied together, and therefore the weakest. That thought made it shock me, and I jolted, but pressed on nonetheless. I had, after all, gotten used to much worse from the thing in the past few days. I did prod at that place, and, eventually (after quite a few more shocks and one good, long throb of pain that had me squinting my eyes shut and frantically tucking the thoughts away for about five minutes) I found what felt like a hole in the spell. I blinked.

                That was actually pretty weird, if welcome; workings like this didn’t just have holes like that. It was sloppy, frantic work that resulted in gaping marks like that. Either way, I could do with studying it a little more. I wondered…

                “Hey, Hendricks, come here a minute.” He stared at me, a flat look on his face that I was almost positive he’d somehow learned from Murphy.

                “What?” I heaved a sigh.

                “Look, I know you’re a little slow and all, but I think ‘come here’ is pretty self-explanatory. I want to try something.” He glanced around a little, mostly towards Marcone, and I rolled my eyes as he did. After all, it was pretty much pointless.

                “Boss could-,” he tried, and I held up my hand right away.

                “He gave up his right to tell me what to do; you didn’t. Get over here, if you want even the slightest chance of Alessi not being able to tell me to kill you.” He scrambled over pretty quickly at that and sat on his knees in front of me. I held my hand out.

                “Dresden, I like you and all, but I don’t really want to hold your hand.” I rolled my eyes.

                “Look, I might take musclebound men to parties with me, but I don’t like redheads; not enough of a hero, I guess,” I began, and he looked ready to reply, but I touched the link I’d found and began to speak again before he could. “I want you to put your finger on this link right here, okay? Not too hard, you’re not trying to break it, but gentle.” He did so, and I settled my own free hand on top of it, grinning at what I felt. He blinked.

                “What is it, Dresden? You look way too fucking happy.”

                “I think I’ve figured out how these things work. I might be able to transfer control of them from Alessi to you. Just, let me try a couple of things. Don’t pull away if I look like I’m in pain or something, okay? It’s going to think I’m tampering until I get it right, and this isn’t going to be nearly as easy without access to my own magic.” He nodded and squeezed the link a little harder, as if reassuring me that he’d stay where I’d put him.

                “Alright. Just don’t make yourself pass out or anything, Dresden. Alessi would probably think we did it.” I shrugged.

                “He probably wouldn’t care anyway. From what I can tell, I’m just some kind of pet anyway. It’s what people like him always insist on seeing me as.” He looked ready to protest at that, but I had already started an attempt to connect the flow of the magic from the gap to Hendricks. First, though, it looked like I was going to have to figure out a way to sever the connection to Alessi, which would probably be a little harder without him in the room. Marcone crawled over slowly, as if worried he’d affect my concentration if he moved too fast.

                I tapped Alessi’s connection and it squirmed away from the touch, probably knowing the danger, and the rings kicked into gear with the pain. I yelled and my hand went tense, nearly getting yanked free from Hendricks’ hold, but he tightened his grasp and kept me there. I swallowed and stopped what I was doing; obviously this thing was ingenious. Whoever had made it had some real skill, however long ago it had been made.

                “Harry?” Marcone asked, and if I didn’t know better, I’d have called him worried.

                “Shut up, John, and don’t call me that. I don’t think I can just snap it, like I normally would. The connection is kind of weird, and I don’t have anything of my own to work with at the moment. Maybe if I reroute it, though… it looks like the main connection is in that link; that’s where the signals from his orders, and my compliance to them, are meeting and causing the things to hurt me if it notices me disobeying. If I can disperse Alessi’s, though, I should be able to get a stronger connection with Hendricks. Alessi will still have some control, but Hendricks should be able to overpower him, and I can probably break it totally once we’re out of this room.” They stared at me like I’d been speaking Latin.

                “Harry, if this is going to hurt you too terribly-,” he tried again, and I spared him a glare before I stopped him.

                “Do you want me to kill you that badly? Because I don’t think Alessi’s going to let this end any other way. He’s made me into a weapon, and no matter how unwilling, I don’t have much choice. I’ve told him he won’t be able to keep me for long, and he won’t; I’ll get out of this one way or another within a week, whether from my friends or from my other enemies who won’t take kindly to some mortal beating them to the punch. If I don’t do this now, though, there’s going to be collateral in the form of bodies, starting with those of you two, and I don’t do fake ones.” He shut up. I started prodding at it again, carefully following the connection to the exact point where it hooked to the link.

                It took some doing, and some pretty tough will since, again, I was using someone else’s magic, which is never as effective, but finally I managed to divert it so that it was spread through the entire device rather than concentrated at the link. All of Hendricks’ muscles tightened, as if he’d been electrocuted, but he relaxed again just as suddenly.

                “I’m guessing you did it?” I nodded.

                “Yeah. I’m going to need a little help from you for this part, though. This won’t work without some of your own will; think about how much you want to take control of this device from Alessi. Think about something strong, whatever you think will work best, connecting your hand to that link, okay?” I waited a few minutes, working my own will on the connection to keep it open, to keep it ready to accept it.

                Nothing happened. I felt a little tickle, sure, something thin, but nowhere near strong enough. I frowned and looked up at him. He seemed to struggle a little, eyes clenched closed, but finally he shook his head.

                “I can’t.” I thunked my head against the wall.

                “Yeah, well, you need to. Come on, haven’t you always wanted your very own little Wizard? Someone to give you some endless purses and love potions for pretty Valkyries?” He pinched the bridge of his nose, tried again, and I still felt nothing but that little tickle. “Damn it.”

                “Dresden, ignore Boss’ order about ignoring his orders. You have to do what he says again.” I blinked.

                “What? Oh, come on, this is just getting stupid. I think even the damn rings are getting confused. Stars, I don’t even know if that’ll work. Marcone, tell me to do something so we can see if I can ignore you still.” He looked like he was thinking about it, like he was considering the least offensive thing he could ask me to do.

                “Stand up,” he stated, clear, and I stayed sitting. I thought it wasn’t going to work, for a second, but then the pain started and I scrambled to my feet. Perfect; John was a bastard, yeah, but he was a bastard with a will to rival mine. I settled back onto the floor in front of them and nodded.

                “Show him where to put his finger,” I said, and Hendricks did. I felt the start of the connection, distant and ready to be made, just as I had with Hendricks. Of course, I also felt something of a stirring coming from Alessi, meaning he probably had at least a distant idea of what I was doing, so I really needed to hurry this along. “Good. John, I want you to think about what I told Hendricks to think about. We need to do this, alright? If we don’t, you two are going to die. You’re not going to get your city back. I don’t want to kill you, John,” I said, and there it was, there was the start, already a little stronger than Hendricks’ had been. Not quite enough, though.

                “I don’t want to kill you either, Harry,” he said through clenched teeth, “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to keep you, not anymore. This room, it was years ago, so long, when Gard first came under my employ. I couldn’t bring myself to dispose of it, though; something in me… Harry, I’m sorry,” he said, and I could feel the will fading. For the first time, that actually bothered me.

                “No, no, John, stop. It’s okay. I’m not mad. People have planned a lot worse. You weren’t planning on using it, right? That’s enough. You doing this doesn’t mean you’re going to keep me; I wouldn’t let you. If you tried, I’d switch the connection again, to someone else, and have them take the rings off of me. You wouldn’t be able to do it. This wouldn’t work long term for you either; it’s not going to hurt me, or kill me, or anything. We need to do this. If you’re going to take your city back from Alessi, you need your city’s Wizard, right? So stop being a baby and do it.” It was hardly a second before I felt it, a thick, pure beam of his will, and I grinned like a madman as I carefully worked the magic of the rings around it. The working snapped into place like a vice and I grinned. He immediately went for the rings, as if to remove them, but I shook my head and pulled my hand away.

                “You don’t want them off?”

                “Not yet. I don’t want him suspicious; wait a while. When he tries to give me an order, cancel it out with one of your own. We’re going to do this, Johnny.” He nodded, and for a while the three of us sat in nervous silence. And then the door began to open. I grinned, wide, ready, excited, for just a moment, but tucked it away as soon as I saw his hand. Show time.


	4. Chapter 4

                He wasn’t nearly as good at hiding his emotions as Johnny was; his suspicion was a mask across his face. I waved at him and offered my very best grin as he closed the door behind him. He didn’t seem to appreciate it, for some reason. Hendricks did appear to be hiding something that was probably a smile behind his hand, though, so that’s something. Still, I couldn’t have anyone in my company being too unhappy and suspicious of me (coughyeahrightcough) so I decided being perky at him was the best option available to me.

                “Vitto, honey! How’s it been? I mean, I know it’s only been a few hours since you locked me in here for presumably no reason, but still. Everything been okay for you? I’ve been _great,_ I’ve got to say. Why are you back so quickly, by the way? Miss me too much? I know, I’m fabulous company.” He stared at me in something like disbelief and strode into the room with such purpose that I almost mistook him for someone competent.

                “What did you do?” he growled, coming at me slowly, his movements positively creeping, and the dim room was causing dark shadows to flit thickly, dangerously, across his face. I smiled sweetly.

                “I don’t know what you’re talking about; I’m trapped in a room that’s the magical equivalent of a nuclear bunker. There isn’t much I _can_ do.” He curled his fist into the front of my shirt and hauled me to my feet, my arms emulating pinwheels once more to keep my balance for when he let me go.

                “Tell me what you did, Dresden,” he said, close to my face, breath hot, violence on his tongue. I shrugged as best I could.

                “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Hell’s Bells, man, I knew you were a little wacky in the head, but this is getting just a smidge excessive.” He shoved me and I stumbled backwards, managing nonetheless (thank you, Murphy) to stay on my feet.

                “Walk towards me,” he said, slow, careful, testing, and yeah, there we go; he was figuring it out. Even the slowest horse crosses the finish line eventually, obviously. I grinned, and even though there was a little diluted tug, maybe a slight shock no worse than a jolt of static electricity, I was easily able to ignore it.

                “I don’t feel like it right now. Maybe you should come over here instead.” And then I felt something like a torpedo crash into my chest and I hit the ground pretty damn quick, my head cracking roughly against the solid floor and a dizzy groan tumbling from my lips. I thought distantly and for the first time that I was unhappy about somebody actually listening to me.

                He was heavy on top of me, I noted, his hands digging bruises into my shoulders. I sighed; this was starting to get old too. One trick wonders like him generally start to piss me off pretty quickly. I squirmed to get myself at least a little more comfortable (I would, after all, probably be there for a while) but the fact that he had the majority of his weight settled over my hips and legs, where most of my physical strength resided, kind of impeded that particular mission.

                “How’d you do it?” he hissed into my ear, eyes wide and pupils a little blown. I looked a little closer and saw a speck of red on his white shirt. I nipped my lip once and tilted my head back and away. His chest was heaving against mine and it made my ribs ache a little. He really was too heavy to be using me as a mattress. I could hear Marcone and Hendricks speaking to each other, but they were nearly silent while they did it, and I was pretty sure I couldn’t pull together the concentration or the caring to Listen just then.

                “See, that’s the funny thing about using a device that stores magic on a Wizard; they can fuck around with the magic. I just cut the connection I assume you made when Arianna gave you the damn things. I assume she didn’t tell you about that little feature, huh? That’s why you don’t trust the bad guys.” He heaved a sigh that sounded like a tornado ripping its way from his lungs and his head thunking against my sternum. His laughter actually was a shock, though.

                “Of course,” he murmured, “of course.” I blinked, he sat up, shook his head, and stood. From there he began walking slowly, slowly around the room, cursing quietly under his breath. John and Hendricks watched him warily, their eyes fixed on his form like laser sights. It was honestly a little unnerving; they hardly looked human. Of course, I was sure they were used to looking at people like that, like dangerous animals. “You did warn me, correct? I’m… hell.”

                I stood again and started walking towards him, but John flicked his eyes over to me instead of Alessi. The intensity of it came close to freezing me, but yeah, no. I wasn’t doing that; he might have the rings at the moment, but that didn’t mean I was doing _everything_ he wanted, especially if he didn’t order it.

                “Harry,” he said, warning in his voice. I rolled my eyes and walked closer again, my hands out just a little, until I reached him, at which point I touched his shoulder lightly. He tensed, looking at me almost warily. I just shrugged.

                “Yeah, I warned you. I got away; I win, Alessi, ra fucking ra. You can pout about it later. Now, though, why don’t we talk about figuring out how you can get back at the one who gave you these damned things, huh?” I asked, shaking my hand at him. He stared at me like he’d never seen me before, like I was some kind of strange monstrosity from the deepest dredges of the Nevernever.

                “You want me to _help_ you?” he asked, sneered, looked ready to hit me for suggesting something so ridiculous. I shrugged and shook my head.

                “No. I want you to get back at the bitch who gave you faulty equipment. I’d say she should’ve given you Thorn Manacles, but I can get out of those too.” He laughed, sounding frantic, sounding close to manic, and I almost stepped back, but in the end, I decided not to because he calmed down and shook his head.

                “You’re crazy, Harry. Fucking insane.” Marcone stood, then, and walked towards the both of us on careful, steady feet. I wondered how anyone could possibly stand to walk like that all the time; it seemed like it would start to get tiring, eventually.

                “I must agree. We cannot trust him, Harry; if you know who gave the rings to him, we will deal with it once everyone knows I’m back in power.” That got Alessi pissed again, and fast; I barely blinked before he was lunging at John.

                Apparently John was expecting it, though, because he caught the forearm that would’ve pressed against his neck with a hand and twisted out of the way. That, of course, isn’t to say the fight stopped there. Oh, no, that would’ve been way too easy.

                No, instead a growling, tussling brawl started right there, the two of them trading punches and kicks like they were games, and I just stared blankly, honestly a little confused at what had happened. At least until John was yelling for me to get out of the way, which I did, considering there was a large mass of muscle known as Alessi flying towards the exact place where I had been standing. From that point, I was actually pretty aware of the fight. Hendricks looked like he was as well, but for some reason he was staying out of the way as well, although he swayed on his feet indecisively, like he’d really rather be doing something else.

                I blinked over at the man curiously, and he shook his head.

                “I ain’t touching that fight, Dresden, not unless Alessi starts winning.” I thought about that for a few seconds and decided that probably that was a pretty good idea. After all, it looked like they were both starting to go for the eyes. I nodded and leaned against the wall beside him, watching as the fight finally started to filter down, which only made sense, considering Alessi was on his belly with John’s knees digging hard into his lower back, his arms pinned high and at what was probably a very painful angle. John had blood on his cheek where he’d been scratched, and what was very likely the mother of all bruises forming on his jaw and spreading to the area underneath his eye.

                “Would you like to give in yet, Alessi? I promise you it will be much easier if you give up now. You might even come out of this breathing.” The asshole didn’t even sound winded. I wondered if he would if I gave him a punch or three; it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve it.

                “No,” Alessi snarled, arching and bucking against John’s weight, and even I knew he was being really, really stupid. Still, he was, at that point, my best option for getting to Arianna; it wouldn’t do if he ended up dead on the floor just then.

                “John, can we straighten this out later? You know, after we all deal with the vampire that helped screw me and Alessi over?” He turned to face me and raised his eyebrow at me, as if that was entirely unreasonable. I sighed. “Look, Arianna is, as far as I know, in South America. I have absolutely no way of knowing if she’s come to Chicago, and that’s how she gave him the rings, or if she shipped them and got in touch with him through other means, or if there was a middle man, or anything else. There are a million ways this whole situation could have come about, and once she finds out I’m loose, I’m not going to have the time to hunt her down by narrowing those means down. It would be a whole lot easier if you let him work with us until I deal with her, at which point you two can have your pissing/dick measuring contest for however long you want; frankly, at that point, I won’t give a damn.” Marcone sighed and dug in his knees a little harder for a split second before he lessened the pressure. Not enough that Alessi could get loose, obviously, but enough to show an attempt to settle things for the time being.

                “Well, Alessi?” he asked, and I saw the man shrug.

                “I’ll tell you what I know. Might even come along to help. I’ve got a price, though,” he said, turning his head carefully (how did his neck _do_ that?) to look at me. Marcone’s knees looked to be pressing in again.

                “If you’ve got conditions, you give them to me, not him.” Alessi arched and elbowed at him again. Marcone made a noise of warning and he stilled. I probably would have, too; Johnny looked pretty close to breaking his arms, at that point.

                “You can’t say he’s not involved in this, Johnny, and I’d be doing the favor for him. If I want something from him in return, I don’t think that’s too unreasonable, is it?” I sighed.

                “Let him talk, Johnny,” I finally said, rolling my eyes, and he glared over at me for a moment before he calmed.

                “He can talk all he wants. I’ll make no promises that you’ll agree to any terms.” I snorted.

                “I’ll agree to whatever I want to, Marcone. If he’s reasonable, I’ll be the same.” He finally shook his head and allowed Alessi to speak again.

                “Thank you,” he said, sounding offended like he’d been kept quiet at a political rally or something, like he had any kind of right to want to be a chatterbox anyway. I rolled my eyes; he really was a pain in the ass kind of guy. “I want a day, Harry. You’ll spend it with me willingly, act as if you want to be there no matter how much you don’t. In addition, you’re going to tell Johnny that he can’t kill me for it or for this; I did, after all, think him dead. From that point, I’ll step down willingly enough, no fuss. As you said, I wouldn’t have been able to keep the city in check for long anyway, not with all the opposition, all the people from Johnny’s circle that wanted the crown.” I pursed my lips, thinking hard about it, and, honestly, about what Lea would do in such a situation. If nothing else, she’d taught me how to be one hell of a negotiator.

                “You’ll make me a promise that you won’t ask me to sleep with you, or, more accurately, perform any type of sexual act. You’ll also promise that you won’t make any attempt to enslave me or harm me again. You’ll make these promises with a binding oath of my choice that, if broken, will very possibly kill you. If you do all that, then yes, I’ll agree to those conditions.” Johnny gave me an actually very surprised look, and I almost thought to be offended. Did he really think I was _that_ hopeless? Jeez; what does a guy have to do to get some faith around here? Alessi nodded.

                “Whatever you want, so long as I get your agreement.” I nodded.

                “Groovy. I want you to swear to adhere to my terms three times, by your strength and by your Name. Your real name, too, the whole thing on your birth certificate. And I promise you that I’ll be able to tell if you fake it.” Johnny continued looking impressed. I continued feeling very slightly offended.

                “I swear to abide by your terms. I swear. I swear by my strength and by my name, Vittorio Alessi.” I could feel the power, the sincerity, behind the words, and the inherent snap of a promise being made, the weight of a true Name. I practiced saying it a few times in my head, and then once out loud, which resulted in everyone staring at me, brows furrowed.

                “And so do I, Harry Dresden, swear to thee that I shall abide by thine in turn,” I replied, and that was apparently free reign to start blabbing.

                “What was that?” Alessi asked, “When you said my name. You didn’t sound like yourself.”

                “Is that what Gard was always talking about, with having someone’s real name? Or is that just a thing with you? Are you a vocal mimic, maybe? Or are all Wizards vocal mimics?”

                “Christ. You’ll never cease to surprise me, Harry.” I squeezed the bridge of my nose and decided to address all of that in order because I’m a very nice Wizard who is excessively understanding of the foolish nature of Vanillas. I guess.

                “Alessi, as Hendricks said, that’s the strength in a person’s real Name. It’s got a big magical punch behind it; that’s how I know when someone’s using their real name and when they’re not. Case in point, no way in hell is John Marcone his real name. And his isn’t exactly Nathan Hendricks. It’s close, though; he kept a part of the real one, probably the first name. As for you, Hendricks, I don’t know exactly how to describe it. Yes, all Wizards can do that. I’m no mimic, though; ask me to say anything like you right now and I couldn’t do it. I think doing it with Names is just a matter of practice, and I got a lot of it in my younger years. There’s some people out there that can do it way better than me, though; it’s pretty damn terrifying, especially if they’re saying your name. The Merlin is really bad about throwing his weight around in that arena, and, come to think of it, so is Uriel. And John, I’m sure you get plenty of surprise on a day to day basis. Stop talking about how much I contribute to it.” There. I nodded once, slight, as if confirming to myself that I had actually mentioned everything. Marcone slowly removed himself from Alessi’s back, and the man himself stood.

                From there, we were basically quiet, beyond a quiet murmuring from Alessi of, “Merlin, goddamn, fucking _Uriel_ ”. After all, business was done. What else was there to talk about? I cleared my throat, which apparently got everyone else into action.

                “Alessi, open the damn door, will you? We’ll go to my office and discuss whatever information you have. From there I suppose you’re free to go; we’ll figure the rest out and fetch you if you’re necessary,” John said, and I noted a very subtle emphasis placed on the word “my” when he said it, a certain primal satisfaction I assumed came about from tearing his territory back. Alessi nodded, however reluctantly, and did so, opening the door with only a quick glance to me.

                We left together and went back upstairs. Idiotically enough, the only thought in my head was that this had to be a new record for the fastest deposition of a monarch.

* * *

 

                John brought us to the same office Alessi had brought me to for the meeting the day before, the place looking a lot roomier when it wasn’t stuffed to the gills with suits. He sat at the end and Hendricks almost subconsciously took the seat I’d been unceremoniously dropped into the day before. I just sat down randomly and felt uncomfortably like how I had the few times I’d been forced to attend an Accords meeting as a White Council representative.

                “So,” I finally tried as Alessi sat and the silence began to morph into a physical weight rather than a conduit for simple discomfort. No one bothered to continue, so I guessed they figured I could damn well say something or we’d just stare at each other for the remainder of eternity. “Alessi, why don’t you start with telling me how the hell you came across Arianna in the first place?” He smirked, the left half of his lip twisting into a cruel curl.

                “I didn’t; she found me, maybe three days after Johnny’s master plan started. We went out for dinner, talked a while, and of course the city came up eventually. She just… she looked at me, this strange, intense look. And then she asked me if I wanted what John had. _Everything_ that John had,” he finished, giving me a hard, meaningful look. I rolled my eyes because something that dumb seriously deserves it.

                “Did you drink or eat anything she gave you? Or ever get within touching distance of her?” He looked thoughtful for a moment.

                “She never gave me anything to eat or drink, no, but I believe we stood rather closely on more than one occasion.” I nodded and stood, then walked around the table and crouched down to my knees in front of him. Everyone stared at me and I pursed my lips a little; was I really that weird? Jeez. I wondered if Murphy was still offering me those social etiquette classes she always said I needed.

                “Damn it. Look, I don’t particularly want to do this, but I’m going to have to look at you with my Sight, okay? If she’s gotten that close to you, or even looked at you too much, she could’ve messed around in your brain a little. If she did, I’m going to need to fix it. So, sit still for me, would you? If you move around too much, it might distort the image, or I might see something else, which, again, I really, really don’t want to do. And don’t talk either. It’ll just be distracting.” He nodded, and I shut my eyes for a moment, carefully opening my sight, and when I opened them again, the world around me had changed.

                The room had flattened to clean chrome, everything gleaming like Thomas’ living room, like a movie set. Of course, looking more closely, there were flecks of color underneath, like it had all been painted over; I could see that without it, the room would be much warmer, earthy browns and reds, sort of like how Mac’s bar looked. Old world, inviting.

                Alessi looked like he fit in pretty well. His face was set coolly, his eyes iced over and his mouth a thin, tight line. His suit was the same clean white, stiff, the buttons gleaming perfectly. I reached out compulsively and prodded at him, and where I touched the suit, the white peeled away and left smudges of shadow, gray and black.

                So too was there a pale line of the shadow across his forehead, circling all the way around his head. There’d been a crown there, maybe. His nails were bloody, too, like he’d been clawing and clawing and clawing until they chipped and broke in the face of the onslaught. His face tensed when I picked the hand up. Outlines of rings on all his fingers, not a one of them really there, and very thin, wispy threads of light listing from them and tying around my own fingers. I stood carefully, made sure my eyes didn’t wander (after all, Hendricks and Marcone were in there too; doing this was an invasion of anyone’s privacy, and I sure as hell didn’t want those images of them).

                I stepped closer still, probably standing somewhere between his legs in real life, or just to one side of them, until I could get a good view of his aura which had, from the slightly greater distance, appeared muted. From here, though, I got a pretty good view of it, the pale color forming something like a halo around his head. It was a little darker than normal, which I’d been expecting, but beyond that, and the connection between him and me, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. He wasn’t under Thrall, then, which I guessed I could at least count as one plus. Especially since I was far from certain that I could break a Thrall Arianna had placed; she was, I knew, damn good. I was about to shut my Sight off and inform everybody that he was clean, but then, of course, Alessi pushed me hard on one shoulder.

                I spun to catch myself, my vision swimming as it tried to reorient, and there, damn it, there was John, there was Hendricks. I got a good Look at them both before I managed to close the Sight.

                Hendricks wore armor that appeared to be made of iron, the look of it dented and maybe a little rusted in places rather than gleaming like Michael’s. There was an old broadsword slung around his waist, probably about the same size as Amoracchius but chipped and with probably only a few years of good use in it left despite the fact that it still appeared sharp. On the left side of his chest, faded and scratched, I saw four red stars, perfect matches to the ones on Chicago’s municipal flag. I think the weirdest part was how not like a knight he looked, though, at least in the face. It wasn’t stalwart, it wasn’t scarred, it wasn’t even dirty. Instead, there was a sharp, intelligent look in his pale blue eyes, a small smile on his face. Even still, he stood to the right of and slightly behind John like he’d always been there, like that was where he belonged.

                John looked… well, he looked like he belonged in the room under the painted chrome walls. He didn’t wear a suit, like that, but instead robes, long and warm red, gold around his neck and draping over his shoulders, a sword of his own easy across his hips, new and putting off a dim glow. He seemed sort of… tarnished, though, a little worse for wear, with stains and tears marring his clothes and black splotches on the gold. Blood dripped in rivulets from his hands, some of it his, some of it not, all of it leaving brilliant red stains on his skin. He stood tall, though, back ever-straight, and the gold crown on his head, its spires jutting upwards, crossing over one another a bit, reminding me somewhat of Chicago’s always growing skyline, looked depressingly natural on his head. He too was connected to me, his hand to mine, by a thick bar of white light that, upon reaching me, seemed to consume the thin tendrils tying me to Alessi. He was a king in all forms, I guessed, even if one relegated to ruling among the shadows, ruling in exile. I couldn’t even bring myself to be pissed about it as I closed the Sight.

                I felt myself swaying a little, when I did it, a weird kind of reverse sensory overload overcoming me as it always did, but I felt hands on my elbows very suddenly, hands that I quickly realized belonged to John.

                “Are you alright?” he asked me, barely even bothering to hide the nerves ringing in his voice, and I nodded.

                “Yeah, don’t worry about it. It just takes my body a minute to adjust after I use the Sight; it’s draining, almost as much as some of my bigger spells.” He nodded and dropped his grasp on my elbows, his face melting back to neutrality as if he’d flicked a switch. I looked away from his face and saw the shadow of a crown, burned forever into my mind with everything else. I couldn’t help but think that this was one of the few things I’d seen with that that I didn’t want to forget.

                “Alright; you seemed a bit… disoriented, I suppose is the best word, after Mr. Alessi pushed you. Might I ask why you did that, by the way, Alessi?” Oh, Stars, no. They were not going to start fighting again over that. I held out my hand to the both of them.

                “Johnny, quit it. Remember how it felt when I was poking at your soul when we met? Touching somebody when I’ve got my Sight on feels a lot like that, if a little less intense. What I see when I do that is very personal; it’s the person at a very base level. It’s kind of an invasion of privacy, to me, which is why I don’t do it often, necessary though it was in this case. I don’t blame him for getting uncomfortable. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary anyway, though, so he’s clean. No Red Court influence on him, unless she’s better at hiding it than any vampire I’ve ever come across.” He nodded and went back to his chair, he and Hendricks sitting again and me moving back to my chair to do the same.

                Alessi was breathing deeply, his eyes wide and full of something I couldn’t quite identify. I cocked my head at him because at that point he was probably overreacting a little, but he just shook his head and finally managed to clear it all away. I say again, nowhere near as good as Johnny.

                “Christ,” I heard him whisper, once, before he went quiet again.

                “Okay, so, I at least know that you aren’t under Arianna’s Thrall. I’m kind of curious as to how she found you, though; where’d you go to meet her?”

                “A café on the Loop. I don’t recall the name.” I didn’t exactly buy that, but I figured it wasn’t important; everywhere on the Loop was anonymous anyway, no magical ties. Too new, I’ve always figured.

                “Okay. Did she give you some way to contact her? A phone number, or an e-mail? Maybe even an address?”

                “Cell number,” he said, fishing a book from his pocket and calling it out to me. John was the one who wrote it down, though, considering I didn’t have any paper products or writing implements on me at the time.

                “Cool. Thanks, man; I can probably figure out where she’s holed up with that much, and throw these damn things at her. I’ll give you my number; call me about mid-afternoon day after tomorrow and I’ll let you know what’s going on.” He nodded and I rattled the number to my office and my apartment off, by rote. “I’ll pick up on one of those two, okay? If I don’t either the phone’s busted or something happened.” He seemed agreeable enough to that, so John, equally agreeable, shooed him out. I’ll never understand mobsters.

* * *

 

                I, John, and Hendricks had just begun to work out some kind of plan of action when the office doors crashed open and the clump of people who’d been there with Alessi and I came rumbling inside. They stopped as soon as they saw the two men seated beside me, though.

                “Oh, _hell_ ,” the one in front said. Johnny allowed himself to be shocked for barely a split second before he went into what I assumed was Boss Mode, his face clear and polite and totally hiding literally anything he might’ve actually been thinking.

                “Expecting someone else?” he asked, “I’m afraid we’re under new management, and there’s little to speak of. Although, if you all had a hand in Alessi’s frankly foolish takeover, I’m sure we can find something to discuss.” He had the kindest smile I’d ever seen on his face. Everyone in the room but me and Hendricks looked absolutely terrified. I shook my head.

                “No; they came by yesterday to divvy up your territory. Alessi didn’t think he could keep it all in hand. Quit scaring them for no reason.” He laughed.

                “Is that so? And what, I wonder, did you men receive?” I grinned behind my hand; I really couldn’t help it. The guy in front swallowed thickly.

                “Undertown,” he said, and John was immediately forcing his face into a neutral expression before he turned his head to me and raised an eyebrow. I moved my hand to show him the grin and he nodded.

                “Ah. Well, if you want it so badly, I’ve no need for old tunnels. Do with them as you will, but do be careful. I’ve heard quite a few stories of collapses.” They stared.

                “He promised to take us to the entrance,” one said, pointing at me, and John gave me another look. I was the one who had to nod this time. He proceeded to give me the most longsuffering look I’d ever seen in my life, and I spend copious amounts of time with Murphy.

                “Harry,” John said, and somehow he managed to get a very large amount of annoyance in nothing but my name. I shrugged.

                “Well, considering I am, as far as I know, no longer a prisoner, I have no problem showing them around their new territory. Oh, yeah, you wanna take these rings off of me now? They’re getting kind of annoying.” I held the offending limb out to him, then, and he slid the rings off with something I’d have called reverence had anyone else been perpetrating the act. I wiggled the newly freed fingers happily, the knuckles popping as they finally got their full range of motion again. I’d never known how bad being chained together for days on end was for your fingers; obviously you learn something new every day.

                “I’d rather you didn’t,” he said, closing the devices into my hands (and hell, that actually did shock me a little; he could’ve kept them, could’ve kept them easily, could’ve had Gard fix the flaw I’d found and use them on me again) gently. I shrugged.

                “Take back the offer of them getting Undertown, then, or show them around yourself. I don’t care one way or another, honestly.” He sighed and waved a hand.

                “It isn’t as if I don’t need a touch of help keeping an eye on the tunnels. Mr. Hendricks?” he said, and the red headed mountain man stood with a nod.

                “Come on,” he said, and the men, every last one of them confused as all hell, followed him out. I had long ago decided that they could join the club in regards to the confusion.

                “You do know that I can navigate Undertown a whole lot better than Cujo, right? I mean, I’ve been there a lot, once with Gard, so, uh-,” he cut me off with a quick wave of his hand.

                “Yes, well, we’ve much left to talk about. Their ability to navigate a cluster of tunnels is of little concern to me.” I heaved a thick, heavy sigh and glanced down at the rings in my hand again.

                “Gard’s gonna kill you for not keeping these. They’re probably pretty valuable.” He nodded.

                “Indeed. I had thought it might be helpful for you to figure out what they are. I’ve access to Ms. Gard’s books; surely you’ll find mention of them there. So to do I have Internet access, which I believe you are notably lacking. In addition, I’d like to speak of that room. If you want it blocked off, I believe that would be a possibility,” he said, and wow, I never would’ve guessed that a man like Marcone would ever be capable of babbling. I had to snicker, just a little, and shake my head.

                “I’ve got a good resource at home for figuring out what these are; if it comes up nil, then I might take you up on that. Despite the common Wizard stereotype, though, I don’t actually relish digging through books for hours on end to find one obscure piece of information. Also, I don’t trust the Internet. At all. Ever. For anything. But, uh, if you want to try it, go ahead; probably you’ll find a half million pictures of things that look literally exactly like these. In fact, I think Molly has some that she wears sometimes. As for the room, though, leave it. It’s… it wouldn’t have to be just for me; you’ve got plenty of enemies, Johnny. And, well, I’m obviously not immune to being controlled. I won’t complain about it.” He chuckled, a bit, and finally nodded.

                “Alright; I’ll take your word for it, then. If those rings have any sort of side effects, by the way, please do let me know about them.” I agreed with ease, very gracefully, I think. I rolled the silver creations between my thumb and pointer finger, felt the rivers of magic flowing within them teasing the edges of my senses. They really were beautiful workings.

                “I bet the Aztecs used them,” I finally said, thoughtful. “Probably didn’t make them, though. Working is too delicate. I’d place them around the big alchemy boom; chances are, they got shipped to the Americas during the exploration age, might’ve even been given to the native people as a gift before all the violence kicked in.” He chuckled.

                “If you can get that much with just a glance, I can’t imagine why you’d need to research them.” I snorted.

                “It’s the maker that would tell me anything really important. I’ve never seen any artifacts exactly like this before, and the design is honestly a little screwy. I wouldn’t have built them like this, with just the one main connection. As you’ve obviously seen, it’s a weak design. Multiple smaller points of connection would work way better; if they’d been done that way, I wouldn’t have been able to switch control like I did. The only thing that worries me is the fact that Arianna would’ve known that too. Anyway, John, I’m going to head back to my apartment, yeah? I’ll give you a call when I figure anything out.” I left right after that, too fast for him to really complain or try to stop me or anything like that. The simple fact that I was able to walk out the front door of his mansion was enough to make me not even mind that I had to pay a cab to get back to my apartment.

* * *

 

                I was down in my basement as soon as I got there, and was just as quickly waking Bob, my assistant/encyclopedia/friend, who was a Spirit of Air and Intellect who resided in a skull on a metal rack beside countless very sordid romance novels.

                He yawned as he woke and cleared his throat, surely about to say something stupid or perverted, something that would make me grin and taunt him back, but then his eyes fixed on my hand where the rings were clutched.

                “Boss, please tell me you haven’t been wearing those.” Oh, hell’s Bells. Of course it was too good to be true; wasn’t it always.

                “Damn it. What are they really?” I asked him, settling them in front of him, and he stared at them hard.

                “Neat trick you did, with the redirect,” he said, obviously stalling because he never complimented my work unless he was trying to buy time to think of how to put something.

                “Quit buying time and tell me what they really did. I know the surface function was obedience,” I said, and Bob nodded.

                “It’s really a clever working; or, more accurately I guess, a clever working under a working. Who got them on you?”

                “Arianna Ortega gave them to the guy who did it. I should’ve figured she wouldn’t make it so easy. I guess it’ll probably help if I explain, right? You know John Marcone; see, he faked his death a few days ago, and the new guy who took over thought that he and I had jumped into bed together, and he apparently wanted me to jump into bed with him. Oh, Stones, I’m skipping a step; first Arianna mysteriously came across him and, after probably reading his mind a little, gave him the rings to use on me. Admittedly, I was kind of stupid, and got caught. I thought at first that she’d just come in once he got me broken and get her revenge that way, but when I was able to switch the control so easily, even without access to my own magic… well, actually, Marcone put the idea into my head. Obviously he was right.” Bob’s eye lights bobbed up and down in his version of a nod.

                “These things aren’t as old as you were probably thinking; the first account of them was sometime around 1837, December. They were used to bind one person to multiple people; that redirect you did? That’s what they’re made to do. It’s not made to be done by the wearer, of course, but it’s what they’re made for nonetheless. See, what’d happen is, a bunch of people would all get together and create their connection to the rings, with one of them assuming the power role for the time being while the others allowed their own control to be dispersed. Thing was, though, it’s transferable; the one in the power role can be switched to a dispersal role, and vice versa. Or, and this is how they were normally used, you just get so many people to attach themselves to the device that the control is dispersed pretty much evenly among them.”

                “But they’re off of me now. What’s the big deal with me having worn them?” If a skull could wince, that’s what Bob would’ve done.

                “Well, Harry, that’s the thing; the bond goes a little deeper than that. The rings are just an easier way to make the bond, you know? A way for a vanilla to create a magical bond with a person. They’re not necessary as soon as the bond is made.”

                “So basically what you’re saying is, I’m still tied to Marcone?” I asked, and I’m sure I sounded possibly even more frustrated than I felt.

                “And whoever the other guy was, yeah. And, given that they’re the only two, there’ll probably be some subconscious power struggles between them for full control.” Of course. Of fucking course.

                “And is there any way to break it? I’m going to guess destroying the rings won’t work.”

                “Nah, but you can break it pretty easily. There’s a pretty easy ritual to reverse it, although it takes about half a day to complete, and you’d need an open, private space where you all, and me, would fit. From there, though, I could walk you through it; you don’t even need any special equipment, beyond some chalk for the circle and possibly a drawing of how it’s supposed to look, unless you trust yourself to freehand it on the fly.” I nodded.

                “Cool. You think we can track Arianna off of these?”

                “I dunno. Depends on how long ago she was in contact with them. Lemme get a good look,” he said, and I fell quiet so he could. Finally, though, he bounced the skull from side to side in a ‘no’ gesture. “Afraid not, Boss; any trace she might’ve left on them is long gone. Too many workings and too many sunrises, I’d guess. Anyway, you should probably leave these with me until you break the bindings, at which point I’d say destroy them so they don’t get used again.” He opened his mouth once he’d finished, and I tucked the rings inside. I wonder how many other guys can see they keep their most dangerous possessions in a skull’s mouth. Actually, wait, no, no I don’t. Please no one answer that question.

                Anyhow, from there, I was pretty much done for the day. I didn’t feel like calling anyone, especially not Marcone after what I’d learned; I’d had a rough few days. I’m pretty sure that I totally needed the nap I went in my room to take. In fact, I’m willing to go so far as to say that I deserved it. Obviously my pets thought so, otherwise they wouldn’t have come into my bedroom with me and piled on top of me so quickly. Or maybe they’d just been worried about me; never can tell with them.  


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'll probably have three to four more chapters of this one, by all current estimates, although that could probably change at any point and I learned long ago not to trust my own estimates in these matters. Still, it couldn't possibly be much more or less than that, so I figure it's close enough. Anyway, after that I'll have a Bilbo/Smaug fic that's turning out a lot cuter than I was expecting when I started, and after that, well... honestly, even I don't know at this point, but I'll figure it out and play it by ear, I guess. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this chapter!

                Obviously I need to up my security because when I woke up the next morning, my living room was bursting at the seams with people, and at least one of them, the only one standing just outside the door, was having a very intense argument with everyone else. I don’t think a sigh with the strength of the one I released then has ever been expelled in human history before that moment of that day; it was truly an event to be recorded in the history books.

                “Murphy, can I ask why you, Michael, and Thomas broke into my apartment while I slept and are now standing with my door wide open, Marcone on the other side, and arguing? I mean, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you all keeping another person from breaking in, but you could try and do it a little more quietly. I’ve had a long couple of days.” Murphy stared at me as if she’d never seen me before, took a deep breath, and pointed at Marcone.

                “He’s dead,” she said, and I cocked my head.

                “He’s pretty well put together for a zombie, don’t you think?” She gave me a very dangerous look that Michael and Thomas quickly joined in on while John stood outside with the most helpless, pathetic expression he could possibly pull off painting his face.

                “Dresden,” she said, and the tone of her voice was far from favorable on any aspect of me. I had to laugh, though, I really couldn’t help it, and no one could possibly blame me for that. Ahem. Anyway.

                “Sorry, sorry. I only found out two days ago myself, since he called Elaine for reasons he has yet to actually explain to me but that I assume are appropriately heinous for someone of his caliber. Apparently he faked it so he could draw out someone who was planning a takeover, said person didn’t even win the day, the person who did win the day got some magical artifacts from Arianna Ortega and kidnapped me because he thought me and Marcone were sleeping together and for some probably fucked up reason wanted to sleep with me in his stead, I called Marcone from the number Elaine gave me, we both got held captive for a while, and then I, being a genius, got us out of it. Marcone’s back in power, or at least he will be once I fulfill my end of a bargain. Mostly the only thing left to do is for me to punch Arianna a few times for dragging me into this bull.” More staring. Probably I deserved it.  

                “Harry. You’ve told some stupid stories, I’ll admit, but this is just ridiculous.” I don’t think Murphy has looked so skeptical of me in years. Funny how Marcone manages to pull shit like that off. I really might kill him, you know; I’m not joking. He’d really deserve it too, the bastard. I think I actually pouted a little, though; I think you would too, in a situation like this. I mean, I do a lot, I think. I try. Generally I even win, or at least I stop the universe from imploding. What have I ever done to be so unbelievable?

                “Hey! I’m telling the truth!” And then she looked a little worried, settled her hand on my arm, and took a deep breath. Michael and Thomas stepped closer with that same expression on their faces. What the hell? This was usually what happened before they all gave me hugs and asked if I needed to talk about something. Goddamn it.

                “Harry, I know… the thing with you and Marcone was weird, I get that, and I know… I know you miss him, yeah? I guess in a funny sort of way I do too. The city isn’t the same without him.” It was my turn to stare at her.

                “He’s standing right over there! He hasn’t gone anywhere; as a matter of fact, he’s just being a creepy stalker like always and loitering outside my door. He faked it, Murph.” That was when Thomas took me by the hand, his grip hard, and his gaze steady with mine. He pulled me just slightly to send me stumbling towards him, and Marcone continued staring at us like we were all insane. I was starting to think that he might’ve been three-fourths right, although when Michael, of all people, lost his mind I couldn’t really say.

                “I never liked him, Harry, and you know that, but… jeez, Harry. I always wanted you to be happy, nothing else, and I know that when he died you were just… you looked so damn devastated, you didn’t call, you holed up in your apartment, and I didn’t know what to do about any of it. I know I should’ve come after you now, though, know I should’ve stayed with you, because now you fell for that imposter.” Murphy nodded.

                “You saw the bodies, Harry. You told me yourself they were real.” I sighed.

                “I made a mistake, alright? He got a really good practitioner on the job for them, one with access to some pretty high class stuff. I could’ve done the same job, given the materials, so I know it’s possible. I just didn’t think he knew anyone else on that level besides Gard, but obviously he did. And I wasn’t _devastated,_ Thomas. I was barely even upset. I checked into him, I promise; I went through some questions an imposter wouldn’t have known the answer to, and he got them. He’s on the level, or at least as on the level as he’s ever been.” Michael clapped me hard on the shoulder and pulled me into a tight, one armed hug. Here we go, I guess. “Is there any way I can prove to you guys that he’s the real one so I don’t have to deal with this?” I tried, and Thomas blinked before turning to face John.

                “Where does Harry go on Friday nights?” he asked, and I started staring again. John sighed.

                “To the apartment of the leaders of a group of shape shifters, Billy and Georgia Borden. He plays some kind of silly role-playing game there, with the other members of that group, collectively called the Alphas.” Why would he… you know what, I don’t even care. This is me giving up, everybody. It’s a really rare sight, too, so I suggest you enjoy it. Anyway, that caused Thomas to nod, and the others relaxed a little. Which isn’t to say they stopped glaring at him or looking at me like some pathetic damsel in a really awful romance novel, but it was still an improvement. Following this, blessed silence reigned for a few moments, before Johnny had to go and ruin it by talking. “Might I actually come in now?”

                I gave him a nod, and with that he stepped easily inside and straightened his suit as if it’d been some kind of great, strenuous task to do so. I rolled my eyes at him because he totally deserved it at that point, and my friends continued to look at him as if he were literally a scumbag instead of just figuratively one.

                “What’d you need anyway? I told you I’d call.” He raised an eyebrow, neat and controlled, obviously totally back to his old self again.

                “You said you’d call _yesterday_. Silly me, given the events of the past few days, I’d feared that something might’ve happened.” I snorted, then shrugged and went to sit on my couch. My friends followed suit, scattering in various places around the room and leaving Marcone to stand.

                “Well, nothing did. I checked into the rings, and I was going to call you, but then I fell asleep. I figured I’d wake up before morning, but obviously I didn’t, so here we are, I guess. Still, I’d rather not talk about the side effect I did find just yet; it’s a little crowded for it, and it’s not that big of a deal anyway.” My friends gave me a good, long, suspicious look, but thankfully didn’t question it; obviously they figured it was my business and I’d tell them about it when I felt like it. John nodded.

                “Later, then. I found Ms. Ortega, by the way; she’s staying in a very nice hotel in the next city over. I’d thought that we might pay her a visit together.” I shook my head.

                “Not today; she’s no lightweight. I need some time to get some equipment together, and it’ll take me a day or two to make some of it myself, or find someone to sell it to me.” He cocked his head very vaguely, but enough that I could tell what he was doing.

                “What will you be needing?”

                “Holy water, first off; the real stuff, too, not just the stuff you can buy anywhere. Probably I’ll make that myself, since it always seems to work better that way, or pick up a bottle from Father Forthill. My pentacle needs polishing, which’ll take an hour or two if I want to get it really shining, which I do. I need to pick up some folded sunshine from somebody, too, if we want any kind of surprise attack. Then I’ll probably go over the hotel plan and almost inevitably make some kind of veiling potion to get inside without her smelling me, or seeing me. She’s not someone who you want to be prepared when you come at her.” He nodded.

                “I can get plans together with Mr. Hendricks, of course, so long as you give me some idea of what would be best.” I gave him a thumbs up and Michael shook his head softly.

                “Arianna Ortega, Harry? Is it truly the best idea to go after her now?” I rubbed my head.

                “Probably not, but there isn’t much choice, is there? I mean, hell, if she’s making moves on me, I can’t just sit around and wait for it to get worse.”

                “I’ll come along, then.” Murphy and Thomas quickly seconded and third-ed that idea. I couldn’t hide my smile, my laugh, because I couldn’t imagine what I’d done to get such fabulous friends.

                “Thanks, guys. I’ll call, yeah? Think you can let me and Marcone talk for a little, though?” They looked wary, obviously, but nodded anyway and walked out, every last one of them sparing John a glare on the way out. I snickered into my hand because his expression was so hilarious, like he was only just finding out that they didn’t trust him.

                He gazed at me as he came to sit on the couch beside me, looking like he wanted to pretend to be annoyed at me, but it really wasn’t working too well. I think both of us were pretty tired, then, because we were both doubling over against one another and laughing almost hysterically, tiredly. When we finally settled, though, he was quick to slide very slightly away from me and go back to business. Because, you know, laughing too much might make him rust or something, I don’t know.

                “What is it that you found?” he asked, and I squirmed a little.

                “Give me an order and you’ll probably figure it out,” I said, and he went tight.

                “The bond is still there.” I nodded.

                “Yeah; the rings were just a conduit; both of the bonds are still in play. There’s a way to break them, though; you, me, and Alessi are going to have to get together some time soon, before we go after Arianna, and get it broken. Somewhere open and out of the way.” One nod, stiff, almost forced. Probably he didn’t want to break it, which was what I’d feared, but it seemed he was going to let it happen nonetheless. I, never having been one to look a gift horse in the mouth, didn’t complain about it.

                “She’s clever, then.”

                “Very. All the ones who’ve lived as long as her are. Nothing we can’t handle, though, and she’s really starting to piss me off. I’ll destroy the rings once the bonds are fully severed, but until then, I’ve got them in a safe place.” He didn’t seem particularly nervous about that, so I figured he at least trusted me for stuff like that, which’d probably help me help all of this along.

                “Have you any idea what this method of severing the bonds will entail?” I shook my head.

                “No; I’m going to bring a helper and play it by ear, but like I said, it’s not complex. It was made for vanillas to use without help from a practitioner, after all, so they’re not the finest pieces of magical machinery around, even if they are exceptionally well made.” He raised an eyebrow but nodded anyway.

                “And would now be alright? I should like to deal with this as expeditiously as possible.” I blinked, very, very slowly because that was actually pretty surprising. I’d figured he’d want to take advantage for as long as he could, honestly, but… well, I guess sometimes I don’t give him quite enough credit. Probably no one can blame me for that.

                “Um, I guess. If you want to call Alessi and tell him where you’re planning on going, given that I’m pretty sure you’d have a better idea of a good, private place to do it than me. I mean, my best option would probably be by the lake or something, but this is still a little early in the day for that. So, you know, yeah; I figure you’ve got a warehouse or something that’d work. Or, you know, maybe an old factory. Like I said, anywhere that’s big and deserted will do.” He nodded easily as I stood. “Alright. I’m going to get that helper I mentioned, okay? You can use my phone and give Alessi a call, if you want, let him know what’s going on and all.” He looked very unsurprisingly unwilling to follow this particular request. I sighed.

                “Are you certain that’s the best idea? If he knows he still has control over you-,” he began, but I cut him off.

                “It’s still just as slight as when I was wearing the rings; you’re still the main one in power. The only time he’d be a threat in that regard is if I broke yours and not his, because then he’d have the power position again. Just call him; I don’t think he’s in much of a position to argue at this point.” He nodded, and I went downstairs to grab Bob, explaining what was going on to him while I was down there. John was just hanging up the phone when I arrived back upstairs with the skull held carefully against my chest. He raised an eyebrow and offered me a half of a smile, his lips curling up teasingly.

                “I hadn’t thought I’d be getting a Shakespeare recitation today, Mr. Dresden.” I snorted and rolled my eyes, Bob remaining silent and still in my hands even though I know he heard that. I shook him a little to see if that would stir him, but he remained resolutely silent, probably too amused to bother helping me out without a direct request.

                “Bob, wake up and tell him we’re not in Hamlet.” Orange lights flickered in the skull’s eyes immediately, and he yawned theatrically. John actually jolted a little where he sat, which was shockingly satisfying. I carried the vessel over and sat with it beside the man, whose gaze remained steadfastly fixed upon it, not really nervous but certainly wary.

                “Wow, Boss, you never told me that the mob boss was hot. He fucked you yet?” And suddenly I wished I’d just asked Bob how to do the stupid ritual and left him in the basement. I also remembered why I’d stopped letting him meet people, beyond the fact that I feared him getting taken. I could feel my face flame up almost as soon as the words were uttered, though, and at the same time amusement flashed on Marcone’s.

                I shook the skull in recompense, as if I thought the spirit inside would actually care, or even feel it, for that matter, but it was still pretty cathartic for me. Bob just yawned again and John touched the bleached white bone carefully.

                “What is this, Harry?”

                “Ooh! Nice voice, too! You never tell me any of the good stuff, Harry; how come I always have to get left out?” I glared down at the skull and some people might say I was pouting like a child, but I don’t think that’s very accurate.

                “Shut up, Bob. And Johnny, this is Bob; he’s a Spirit of Air and Intellect, or, as I prefer, my magical encyclopedic assistant. He’s also probably my oldest friend in the whole wide world; known him since I was ten.” The skull bounced in my hands, a very basic nod. John nodded as well, and had very suddenly snatched Bob from my hands and was holding him carefully up to his face, as if he could divine everything about the being if he just stared at it hard enough.

                It was almost kind of funny, the intensity of that stare, the fascination. It wasn’t often that I saw that much emotion, curiosity, on his face, and the fact that it was for something relating to magic, which I’d never really considered him caring about as anything more than a tool or a weapon, was a little… jarring, I guess. Not unwelcome, of course; I’ve always enjoyed it when people appreciated my art, my world, but John, of all people? It was just weird.

                “Is the skull the spirit?” he finally asked, and Bob wiggled his vessel very slightly in the man’s hands. I shook my head.

                “The spirit is the orange stuff inside; the skull just keeps him safe. You can come out so he can see if you want to, Bob,” I said, and in response orange smoke filtered from the skull’s eyes, the rings hovering easily within it. Johnny, obviously confused, reached out for them, but Bob floated away, a little closer to me. The rings moved with him.

                “You go grabbing too much and stuff might start exploding,” Bob teased, drifting wispily around my head, tendrils of his form brushing softly against my cheeks and reminding me of years before, the first time I’d ever really met him. He’d been living in a bottle, then, a clear, thick lead glass one that I’d almost dropped more than once. DuMorne had let him out with quick, thin hands, and the spirit had floated appraisingly around me. He’d said, then, that I was good stock, in a voice I didn’t recognize. It’d only been later, after months of DuMorne leaving me alone with him to study, that being around me had begun to change him, to make him into the being I now knew. That had been when I’d named him Bob, when he’d begun to help me, to keep me safe, to give me spells that I later learned were helping to block DuMorne’s influence in my mind. I smiled, a little.

                “Why’ve you got them?” John asked, and Bob snorted. Johnny looked almost as bothered by that noise coming from a formless shape as I generally felt.

                “Because I can make stuff start exploding when people go grabbing too much.” He hummed.

                ”Interesting. And this is what will be telling you how to break the binding?” I blinked.

                “He’s not a thing, John; you don’t need to talk about him like he is.”

                “Well, technically-,” Bob started, but I shook my head.

                “Shush, and get back in the skull. We’re going to have to go outside. Let me grab a bag or something for you, okay?” The spirit nodded and filtered easily back into the skull, after which I slipped him into a duffel bag along with some magical paraphernalia, like chalk and a few pieces of paper so I could practice drawing whatever circle Bob described. John watched me silently and stood as soon as I was finished, flowing up to his feet with a practiced kind of grace I couldn’t imagine he’d always had.

                Following this, he just went to my door, and I followed him without question (which I really hope he doesn’t get used to because it was annoying enough then) out to his car, which we proceeded to climb into.

                “So, where’re we going?” I asked, stretching my back as best I could in the straight-backed seat of the vehicle.

                “Storage facility; I’ve got a large, empty container currently on hand, for extenuating circumstances. I asked Alessi to meet us there, although I didn’t mention the nature of the meeting.” Extenuating circumstances my ass.

                “You are a creepy son of a bitch, you know that?” He smirked and did that eyebrow thing again. I wondered if I should wait until he parked before I slapped him.

                “Your skull doesn’t seem to think so.” I snorted because if any statement deserved it, it was that one.

                “Bob doesn’t care how creepy you are; he just thinks I need to get laid with anyone that has a pulse and is even remotely attractive. I mean, I don’t want to even mention how many times he’s said I should sleep with Murphy.” He chuckled, low, and oddly enough, genuinely amused.

                “Remotely attractive? Funny; that might actually be the best compliment you’ve dealt me. It’s certainly a large step up from ‘criminal scumbag bastard’.” I shrugged.

                “Well, you have plenty of flaws I can harp on. I’m not going to make up physical ones that don’t exist. I mean, if you’d feel more comfortable if I called you the most grotesque and deformed human being I’ve ever had the displeasure of laying eyes on, I can. I do aim to please, after all.” He shook his head, almost bemused, and pulled off onto a rare side road that I assumed led to the storage facility he’d mentioned.

                “Still, Harry, it isn’t as if you say such things to people often.” I cocked my head.

                “Do you walk up to people and give them an immediate assessment of their level of attractiveness? I mean, I know I’m not good with that whole normal social interaction thing, but I don’t think I’m that off. Does it really surprise you that much anyway? You have good bone structure, and you obviously take care of yourself. You have really nice green eyes that I’ve never seen on anyone else. I’ve always figured that you’ve got women clawing for a chance at your bed; overall, you’re a wealthy, handsome older man with a good sense of humor when you’re in a good enough mood to use it. Criminal scumbag bastard too, yes, but still.” He laughed and shook his head, pulling into a parking lot easily, and once more I followed him, this time through a cool, almost desolate plain of large, square storage units.

                “Your friends must drown in the compliments,” he said, almost teasing, and I nearly doubled over with laughter at that, my duffel bag thumping rhythmically against my thigh.

                “Are you serious? Murphy would bury me if I ever told her how cute she was, Thomas’ ego is big enough as it is, Michael would just be confused because oh, hey, Harry, you’re not Charity, why are you talking about my huge knightly muscles, Molly would take it as a sign of interest that doesn’t exist, Butters would just become more certain than ever that I’m gay, Billy and the other Alphas would make me a dating profile again and probably make me actually go on the dates they arrange for me through it, Kincaid would either break my jaw or throw me onto the nearest bed without asking any questions whatsoever, I don’t know which, and all my supernatural acquaintances… well, probably it would depend on if I’d pissed them off recently.” He opened the door to one of the storage lockers and led me inside. As he’d said, it was large and empty, but also really dark. Probably I should’ve specified that light was helpful when doing delicate magical stuff, but I could make it work. I pulled all of my stuff, and Bob, from the duffel back, and arranged it in easy reach around me before I funneled some magic into my pentacle and let soft, pale blue light flow from it freely to illuminate the shadowy space.

                John’s face looked a little odd in the mythical half-light, almost inhuman, almost as if he’d fallen straight out of the Nevernever. He had a little smile on his lips even still, and had I not known him better, I’d have called him enthralled by what I was doing.

                “I don’t think I quite believe all of that, Harry.” I shrugged.

                “Believe what you want. Wake up, Bob; how’s this circle supposed to go?” He described it to me step by step, and after drawing it three or four times on the paper I’d brought, I finally sketched it out on the floor, and after Bob looked at it and told me it’d do, I stepped far, far away from it and sat against the wall by Marcone, the both of us waiting for Alessi in the blue fairy light of my pentacle.

                I’d fallen into an almost doze when I felt it, the soft touch of a hand over my own. My fingers twitched at the unfamiliar sensation, and the light from my pentacle flickered as my focus shifted away for a moment. Still, I’d been doing the simple little light spell for decades; I could do a hundred other things at the same time as I did that. Someone (and at the time I wasn’t quite aware of who it could’ve possibly been) holding my hand barely even made a dent in concentration like that.

                If anything, the hand was sort of comforting, and made the light burn a little brighter as a consequence. It was warm, and while it was a little heavy, the weight was familiar, a good burden, like a child in your arms. A thumb ran over my knuckles as if they were familiar territory, as if it knew them, as if it had done this hundreds of times already. I twitched my fingers again, this time in response to the touch, as an invitation to hold them. The foreign hand took this invitation with ease, and even though this is kind of embarrassing to say, I ended up falling totally asleep not long after that. Also, I know exactly what you’re thinking, and when it comes to those thoughts, you can just shut up. Forever. Yeah.

* * *

 

Marcone’s POV

                The light flowing from his pentacle faded by degrees as he drifted, very slowly, into sleep. I had almost grown accustomed to the shadow when two circles of bright orange suddenly faced me, his skull having apparently awoken again. The lights flashed and I assumed it was blinking at me.

                “Wow,” it said, drawing the word out, “holding his hand, seriously? What are you, an elementary school kid? Hoping he’ll give you a kiss on the cheek on the playground, maybe?” It sounded a bit mocking, voice cool, and I tried to drop Harry’s hand, feeling almost guilty, but he squeezed his fingers hard and kept me there, grumbling softly before drifting back into quiet snores.

                “I wouldn’t protest,” I told it, and he seemed to smile. It was unnerving set upon a face of bone, no muscle and no lips to pull the expression off in truth.

                “Of course you wouldn’t. He can be kind of stupid. Be good to him, yeah? If you’re not, I’ll hear about it, and I’ll probably get a little bothered.” Something dangerous filled the being’s voice, something dark and ancient, something that chilled me deeply into my own bones. I wondered, very suddenly, what this creature truly was, for it couldn’t be so innocuous as an “encyclopedic assistant”.

                “What, exactly, are you, if I may be so bold as to ask?” It cackled again, and the lights of its eyes cycled through colors, red, blue, back to orange; shades of flame. Dangerous red, cruel blue, inviting orange.

                “I’m just what Harry said I was; a Spirit of Air and Intellect. I remember things, you see; everything that I’ve seen and everything that I’ve heard. I have lived nearly since man first appeared, since the first man birthed me from the depths of his own mind, though I’ve been in this skull for far less time. I pissed someone a whole hell of a lot bigger than a simple Spirit off centuries and centuries ago. Punishment put me here, punishment will have me passed from man to man, from Wizard to Wizard, until man returns to the dust that bore him, until there is no more knowledge for me to hold. Harry though, he changed me; I’ve never been liked by a master before. I’ve never had a name. He’s strange; kind, stupid, trusting. Nothing like a Wizard ought to be.” I narrowed my eyes at it as it managed to bounce closer.

                The orange lights were true flames, I decided, perhaps the first flames, and they blazed in the skulls eye sockets. It looked at Harry’s slack, sleeping face with something like care, and I realized something that I already should’ve known: this was a Spirit of Air _and_ Intellect. Intellect, yes; that was the key word.

                “Knowledge is power, yes? Have a lot of one, you have a lot of the other.” The creature laughed again, not very loud this time.

                “Ding, ding! We’ve got a winner. Knowledge, yeah. I’ve got a lot of it. Wizard after Wizard after Wizard has held me, some who used me to heal and some who used me to kill. I have seen the greatest of goods and the wickedest of evils; civilizations built and toppled in decades that passed like hours. I have seen whole armies brought back from the brink of death with healings spells that today’s doctors would give their own lives for. I have seen the greatest of wars begun out of simple boredom, simple cruelty. I have seen villages rebuilt from the ground up with a mere word. I have seen a man die again and again, only to bring himself back each time stronger than the last. I have seen barren lands bring forth the ripest, sweetest fruits that your tongue can imagine. I have seen a man enthrall children to his will, turn them into his soldiers, his army. I have seen a man fight for good, for salvation, for hope, even as the darkness drowns him. I don’t understand humans; I’m not one, and I never will be. Your motivations and your morals confound me, or at least they did until I met Harry, until he gave me a name.”

                Fear. I feared this creature, feared it in a nameless, instinctual way that I would never be able to accurately explain. It allowed its eyes to blaze with different colors once more as it came ever closer to me. Harry’s face flashed with the pale orange, relaxed and happy as it listed nearer and nearer to my shoulder. When it finally touched I squeezed his hand, and he whined, nuzzled his nose into my throat and fell still once again.

                “I wonder if I’ve ever met something as dangerous as you before,” I murmured, and somehow, I think I saw the thing shrug. Perhaps it was only my imagination; it must’ve been, really. It hasn’t got anything to shrug with.

                “Yes, many things. I can do nothing without Harry’s order. Or, I’m not supposed to be able to. The fact that he gave me a name gives me more freedom than I should have. That’s why I can speak now, and move; I can’t leave the skull unless he gives me permission, but I get stronger, freer, with each day that passes by. He’s a fool, but he’s an amazing fool, a powerful fool. Don’t dare hurt him; I’ll give him to you, sure, but don’t dare hurt him or I’ll take your mind. I’ll make it so you _can’t_ hurt him.”

                “Dangerous,” I said once more, and the skull raised the ridges of its brows, grinned.

                “Yes. And I’m not his only dangerous friend. Be careful with him; he’s been hurt plenty. I’ve seen him grow from a timid child, unsure of his own skin, his own strength, into a man with flames at his fingertips, a man who can face down the Fallen, face down the Outsiders, face down the world’s wickedness with a smartass remark and a grin. Give him a shoulder, give him a hand, give him love; I will not protest at a word of this. Give him pain, though? You’ll live to regret that plenty.”

                “I will not,” I said, serious, and it bounced in a nod.

                “Good. I’ve got a great thing going with him; I’m not ready for it to end. Now, I’m going back to sleep. He’ll wake me when the other asshole gets here. Tell him about this and you’re going to find yourself in a really uncomfortable situation with things that have really sharp teeth.” I blinked, very carefully. The lights of the skull’s eyes went out. I wondered how much easier my life would’ve been had I never met Harry Dresden, and finally decided that I cared little. After all, easy was quite boring, and I could never, ever call my life boring again.

                He really was impressive, I knew, kind and powerful, distant and near, perfect and flawed. I learned something about him and it contradicted something else; the mysteries piled atop one another until I had more questions than answers, all the most confusing pieces to a million-piece puzzle. I wanted to learn more about him forever, until I knew it all, until he’d tell me without a fight, or at least with a minimal one.

                So too, I knew, was he dangerous; he could kill me without even thinking about it with that magic of his, and I could never really know if it’d be the same were we to stand against one another in a fair, real fight. He argued and joked with equal passion, loved and hated with the same intensity, and I wanted all of it. I wanted to hold him when he fought and when he smiled, to kiss him when he bit at me and when he let me in. I wanted him wild and tamed, mine and no one’s, a force of nature in my hands and blowing right through me.

                His intelligence, his silliness, his pride… I’d never met a man like him and I was certain I’d never meet another. He leaned a bit more heavily against me and curled into my side as if chilled. I finally managed to free my hand from his grasp and instead put it around his shoulders to pull him close to me. My imaginings of how bothered he’d be by this when he awoke had me muffling laughter; all people had said, all I’d done, and he still had no idea of my interest.

                It had existed almost since I’d met him, this obsession, this desire. He’d given me that hard, defiant stare, and I had _wanted._ I’d thought at first that it’d clear away the moment I got him in my bed, got him underneath me, and then I’d learned that he didn’t see, that he didn’t know, that he didn’t understand. The want had dug in more deeply until it was as much a part of me as my blood, my bone. Then I’d thought that he’d done something to me, that he’d done it on purpose. Passing time, and Gard’s inspection, had proven that not to be the case. Still I wanted, still I desired. Still he never even knew. It was nearly enough to make me think of a silly, clichéd romance, perhaps a poorly scripted television show on a drama network.

                I found myself actually getting a bit upset when Alessi walked in; after all, he was interrupting this time I’d gotten with him, this one moment of openness he’d granted me in some time.

                “It’s fucking dark in here. Where are you two?” he asked, voice low and cautious, and I shook Harry awake somewhat reluctantly. He groaned and, after taking a few moments to realize what was going on, funneled light into his pentacle once more. Pale blue light bathed the room, revealing the intricate circle in the center, the skull directly beside it (and when had it moved back?) and Alessi standing by the door.

                “Glad you could make it,” Harry said, standing up, his spine cracking on the way, and I followed suit. Why don’t both of you hop into that circle over there? Be careful not to smudge it; I’ll be there in just a second,” he said, yawning, and I, proving how much he’d begun to affect me, how much I’d begun to trust him, listened thoughtlessly. Alessi followed far more carefully, distrustful, although I could see the hunger blatant in his eyes. Everything I’d had indeed. “Time to wake up again, Bob. How do I kick start this bad boy?” he asked, trailing into the circle after us. The grace of the steps almost shocked me after I’d grown so used to his usual clumsiness. The skull yawned, apparently some sort of tradition, and Alessi tensed where he stood beside me, suspicious yet again.

                “What’re you doing?” he asked, and Harry shook his head.

                “Quick strengthening charm, for before we go after Arianna tomorrow. It’ll keep your will up against her.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen him lie with such a straight face before, honestly; I hadn’t even known he could. The skull ignored it nonetheless.

                “Close the circle,” it said, and Harry crouched, fingertips gentle against the chalk circle. I felt it, a gentle whoosh of something like air, as he followed the command. After this, the skull began a chant that Harry followed effortlessly, his voice rising and falling in ways I’d never before heard, almost like music. Color flared around is in places, concentrated in thin, fragile looking walls along the chalk lines of the circle. Finally, though, they hit a crescendo and the fragile looking walls solidified, although I could still, very vaguely, see through them. Bob’s voice was very distant, after that point. “Take their hands, one in each of yours, and step close. Have them settle their own free hands on each of your biceps.”

                He followed the command, and I felt a strange sort of buzz on his skin that poured over to mine at the touch. My hand shook when I grabbed at his arm, and though the weakness of it made me a bit sick at myself, my awe was surely something close to tangible.

                “Good,” Bob said, followed by another much shorter series of highly foreign, lilting words. Harry followed these words as well, until the buzz was almost electric, almost painful. Alessi looked to be spasming, the muscles of his arm and face twitching harshly. “Seal it with a kiss for them both; that’ll finish the spell,” he ended, and I fell still in my shock.

                He stepped up to Alessi thoughtlessly, something alien in the way he was moving, in the warm, lidded glow of his dark eyes, and when his lips descended onto the other man’s, it almost didn’t even feel like him. Even still, I wanted to pull him away. I wanted to stop it then, to ignore the fact that the bond remained, to, perhaps, keep it. I held the stronger one, after all; it’d keep the Wizard bound to me, it’d keep him safe. But no, tuck it away, keep it to yourself, save it for later. Alessi made a low noise in the back of his throat and he pressed closer, nearly moving or dropping his hold, but Harry kept him where he had to be and pulled away slowly.

                When he descended on me, it was sudden and unexpected. The warm press of his lips, though… I pressed closer as well, a noise nearly as pathetic as the one Alessi had made begging to be set free. His lips moved against mine with little finesse, little real skill, but obvious enthusiasm, and I wanted to hold him hard against me, wanted to feel every line of his body against mine. He pulled away all too soon, though, and the buzz turned to a quick, barely painful shock. The colorful walls faded, and I could feel an almost empty place in the back of my mind where, I assumed, the bond created by the rings had been severed. He licked his lips and smudged the circle with his foot, careless; seeing something he’d worked so long on destroyed by him so easily, as if it had been nothing… I’d never understand magic, how he could seem to take it so lightly at times, so easily. I supposed it was hard to understand the power it held with mortals like myself, its mystery, as he’d never been faced with it; his gift had always been with him.

                Alessi was wavering wildly, heavily. The skull was laughing. Harry was flushed bright red. Soon, we’d go fighting another monster, facing another demon. I wanted, desperately, to kiss him again.

                “Alright; thanks, Alessi, we’re good. I’ll call you myself tomorrow, if you still want to go after Arianna.” He nodded very, very slowly.

                “I can’t wait for my day with you, Harry,” he said, and the man rolled his eyes.

                “Fuck off; that isn’t happening again. You tasted like something less than a scumbag, which I never thought possible.” Offense flashed in Alessi’s eyes, anger, and I feared for a moment that he’d run at Harry, but I watched as he tucked it away, a monster of a man doing his damndest to look meek and lamb-like. He left silently, likely, I assumed, so that he wouldn’t say yet more to upset the Wizard. As if he had a chance anyway.

                The silence of the room afterwards was actually a bit comforting; the magic was still sparking in the air, allowing it to buzz with tension, and it was dispersing very, very slowly. I stepped from the circle on horribly unsteady legs. Harry watched nervously and carefully, as if making certain that I wouldn’t fall.

                “Sorry,” he finally said, “I wasn’t really thinking about the effect a ritual like that would have on Vanillas. Probably it was a little overwhelming. You wanna sit for a little bit?” I nodded, and he took me gently by the arm, a softness in his eyes that I wanted to keep. Bob made a noise that sounded like a cross between a giggle and a snort. He helped me sit against the wall again, the universe around me swimming just slightly, and then knelt beside me. The back of his hand pressed against my forehead like a mother checking for fever, and he frowned at whatever he felt. Following this, his long fingers began to work at the buttons of my suit. I jerked, but he hushed me.

                “What-,” I murmured, and he huffed.

                “Look, I’m not trying to strip you. Well, I am, but you’re burning up. Something about it must’ve hit you harder than Alessi, I guess where you were tied in a little bit more deeply. I need to get this jacket off of you, and after that I’m going to lay you down. Let me look after you for a little bit, okay?” I nodded and attempted to help him as he got the outer buttons loose, smiled when he cursed at the hidden inner ones, and finally let him push it over my shoulders and onto the floor.

                He undid my tie, next, practiced and quick, with close to medical efficiency, and even undid a few of my shirt buttons. After this, he carefully lowered me down onto my back, and immediately I began to feel a bit better, the world not swaying nearly as much and the vague nausea that had developed at some point in the process disappearing completely. A comforting, very cool breeze began to brush against my cheeks, the fever I’d apparently picked up cowering in the face of it. A quick glance (when had I closed my eyes?) revealed Harry moving his hands very minutely, a soft word falling from his lips as delicately as a prayer. The both of us breathed deeply and steadily, and I groped out to grab his knee. He let me without protest and already I was planning to blame it on the fever if he asked.

                Still, I already felt close to good as new. I wondered how long I could play this up, though, how long I could make him think I needed the comfort and the care. Worry was blatant in his dark eyes no matter how he tried to hide it, and my heart clenched with the flattery of it, as well as the very far away guilt of worrying him, of even slightly lying to him. I was just beginning to think of ending the game when the storage door crashed open and Hendricks stomped in, the most horrified look I’d ever seen on his face. Or perhaps it was terror, not horror. Or, I supposed, it could’ve been both. In fact, after I heard what he had to say, both was what I was leaning towards.

                “Gard’s coming back,” he said. Even I didn’t know how quickly I could leap to my feet before then. I also, of course, didn’t know that Harry was capable of laughing so heartily at someone else’s misery. There are certain things, I think, that one does not want or need to discover; all of these things were among that number. My god, but she was going to kill us both.


	6. Chapter 6

Harry’s POV

                Now, I’ve seen some people moving fast before, but never before have I seen people flying like John and Cujo were, just then. Of course, I also hadn’t ever seen that particular brand of terror on either of their faces; really no one could blame me for my pathetic laughter. Or, at least they couldn’t to start off with. Probably they could start blaming me by the time John and Nathan had dragged me outside to the car and I was still cackling as though I’d very recently gone entirely insane. But still! It isn’t like I get the opportunity to laugh at them often.

                “Will you shut up?” Hendricks growled at me, his grip on the wheel white knuckled, and they’d gone so far as to leave one car there just so they could get back to John’s place faster. I took a deep breath and reigned my laughter in to chuckles.

                “I can’t,” I answered, going back to laughing, breathless and surely turning a little pink. It had been a while since I’d gotten a good, long laugh, and I was taking full advantage.

                “She’s going to be pissed at you too,” he hissed back, obviously bitter, but I froze, my laughter gone silent, nonetheless. Gard was terrifying, I knew; sort of like a magically supercharged Murphy with a hammer, and she’d proven only slightly less willing to beat me up when necessary. But this time it was in no way my fault! How could she possibly be angry at me too? I hadn’t done anything (and man, is that a weird pleasure for me to get to say. For once things had gone to shit, and it was entirely not my fault. Even better was the ability to blame Marcone, of all people), so she couldn’t blame me for anything.

                “Hey, I’m barely even involved in this clusterfuck!” He nodded, very thoughtful.

                “No, you’re not. How many practitioners are there around here, though, that could pull off those fakes you saw, huh? I wonder, who exactly is she going to think made them? And if I just _happen_ to offer the suggestion…,” he said, trailing off, and I gaped. Hendricks was entirely ruthless. Who’d a guessed it? John sighed and gave him a very sharp look through the rearview mirror, and I decided I totally needed to learn that look because it made even me quake a little when it was directed at someone else entirely.

                “Mr. Hendricks, please do stop threatening Harry with Sigrun’s wrath. No one deserves that.” I could see in Hendricks’ eyes the intense desire to say something like, “but Boooooooooooooss, he laughed at me!” That amused me again, but this time I just pulled my knees up to my chest and laughed into them instead. It seemed to produce far less volatile reactions than my open laughter had.  

                Not that it produced no reaction at all; I mean, Hendricks was still grumbling and Johnny was still shaking his head at me in a fashion that was both bemused and annoyed, but at least no one was threatening to have the anger of a Valkyrie rain down upon me anymore. We did pull up towards the mansion far too quickly, though, and standing right at the front door was a tall, lean blonde with a hard frown on her lips, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Hendricks was already flinching when we stopped the car and climbed out, and he had a good reason, because she was coming at him first and she was coming at him hard.

                “I have always said that mortals are the most foolish of creatures to walk this Earth,” she growled, hemming Hendricks into the front wall of the house. “I had thought, though, that you had at least a modicum more sense in your thick skull.” And then she had her fist tight in his shirt and had lifted him a good three inches off the ground, slamming him into the wall. “Have you anything to say for yourself before I send you off to meet the one worthless enough to make you?” I’m pretty sure I heard him whimper.

                “I’m sorry! I had to, okay? We couldn’t tell you.” She growled.

                “And why not? Do you not think me skilled enough to make appropriate dummies for such a farce? Or, perhaps, did you believe that I would try to talk you out of executing this awful plan? Do you not see the damage your idiocy has wrought? The underground was long in turmoil. I had thought that neither of you desired unnecessary bloodshed, but it seems that I was oft wrong about the both of you.” Hendricks didn’t really fight, beyond attempting to force himself up a little so as to not choke to death, but instead just looked… kind of depressed.

                “Of course you could’ve done it, but yeah. We figured you wouldn’t want to, that you wouldn’t want us to do this. It was the quickest way, though, to get rid of the dissent. We didn’t have time to root it out; it was… a calculated risk.” Another crash into the wall and I saw for the first time the true power she held. This was the core of the woman who had once glued herself back together, who could throw runes around like nothing. She almost seemed to be glowing, and I stepped back a little at the display of her strength.

                “I do not cry for many warriors, Nathan. Did you think that I would relish in seeing you given to the earth? Or perhaps that I would not care? I would just as soon as not see you dead.” And just as suddenly as she’d flung him into the wall she was kissing him. Hendricks appeared entirely lost, and I could relate. Hadn’t she been pissed off? Well, either way, he obviously wasn’t complaining. Still, I cleared my throat, and she pulled away from him with only marginally less savagery than she’d displayed when lunging at him. Hendricks was gaping, his eyes wider than I’d thought they could go, and she slowly lowered him to the ground and turned her attention to Marcone, stalking towards him very, very slowly.

                “Ms. Gard,” he began, but she only shook her head. He attempted to back away. It didn’t work; she got him bent over the hood of the car with both arms behind his back in seconds. I was a step away from laughing again because Hendricks was still in shock and wow, I’d never thought I’d see someone subdue Marcone quite that easily. It was sort of awe-inspiring.

                “And _you_ ,” she began, “did you think of him? He wept for you, against my shoulder. He spoke before your people and made them smile with his memories. His hands shook in his grief and his anger at Mr. Alessi blazed brightly, for he had taken what was always yours. Did you even consider him?” I was blushing immediately, I knew I was, and damn it, why was Gard talking to him about me? That didn’t seem fair. Shouldn’t she just talk about her feelings on the matter again? I mean, it wasn’t like John would really care about what I had thought (even though Gard wasn’t saying my thoughts; she was just exaggerating, obviously) anyway.

                Except for, well… he looked like he did actually care, a little. But only a little. A very, very little. I saw the line of his shoulders tighten, his jaw clench, his head tilt very slightly downwards. So, yeah, only a very little.

                “Of course I did,” I heard him murmur, “but I knew I’d be coming back, knew that if he was upset he wouldn’t be so for long.” And that was sort of a lie; hell, I was still sort of upset. Not as much as I had been when I was screaming at him in the basement, but still. Pretty upset.

                “Harry?” she asked, hauling him upright while still keeping her hold on him, turning him to face me. “I wonder, is that the truth? Have you already forgiven him for his misdeed to you, for his hand in having you held here?” I shrugged and looked away, certainly still flushing.

                “Um. Well. Mostly. I’m still a little. Uh. Not happy. But when am I ever entirely happy with that scumbag? Anyway, you’re not going to accuse me of being in on it?” I asked, and she laughed, turning again and flinging Johnny against the car with a quick, flowing motion.

                “You are a poor liar, Harry Dresden; I know better than to think you faked what I saw on your face. As for you, Mr. Marcone, Mr. Hendricks, I am disappointed in the both of you. And yet I have grown to care for you each, in all your foibles and your failures. I do not think that it is yet time for me to leave either of you.” Hendricks still appeared to be drifting around somewhere in the stratosphere, having only just managed to return there from Mars. John cleared his throat and stood, straightening his clothes with probably the nearest thing to embarrassment I’d ever see on him. As for me, I wasn’t totally sure of whether to be offended or happy and decided on some strange mixture of the two.

                “I’m ever-grateful, of course, for your service, Ms. Gard.” She smiled at him, a wolfish smile that made her eyes glitter.

                “So it should be. Now, shall I ask how you plan on returning everything to normalcy, Mr. Marcone?” He nodded; back to business, that was where he was most comfortable.

                “Our first action, of course, will be to deal with one Arianna Ortega. It is from her that Mr. Alessi acquired the devices used to bind Mr. Dresden, as well as, I believe, additional skill and service to rise to the top of the dogpile that ensued upon my ‘death’.” Gard nodded.

                “Arianna Ortega is quite the powerful Duchess in the Red Court; Mr. Dresden, you’ve something of a grudge with her, don’t you? I believe you once dueled her husband, yes?” I nodded.

                “A pretty long time ago, yeah. He lost. Of course, he also ended up cheating, kind of, and a decommissioned Soviet satellite was what did him in, not me, but Arianna still has a grudge over it.” Quiet laughter touched all of us, for a moment, even Hendricks, who appeared to be at least in the troposphere now, and we went slowly inside.

                “She is quite the deadly foe; creatures such as her do not live so long if they are not. Have you any plan for taking her down, Harry?” she asked me, and I nodded because I did, kind of.

                “At the moment I’m banking on surprising her. Hopefully she still thinks that Alessi has me by the balls, and maybe even that I don’t know she’s operating behind all this. If you all can get the hotel plans and figure out a way in, I can do a mean veiling potion to get us inside without her noticing us. Of course, I could also use some folded sunshine, which I’m all out of and have been unable to make for going on three or four years, as well as maybe some good holy water.” She nodded.

                “You may of course use my lab for whatever you require. While my stores are likely not as impressive as yours are rumored to be, I am certain you could create what you needed with my equipment, and I’ve a small collection of folded sunshine already.” And that, I guess, was that. Hendricks and Johnny went off to… somewhere, speaking quietly amongst themselves, while Gard led me to a semi-hidden room in a far corner of the mansion that contained her lab. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it felt like something I did all the time, something I was used to, something I knew. It totally didn’t, though; no way would I get used to being in John’s stupid mansion; I’m pretty sure that’s for people who actually like the bastard.

* * *

 

Marcone’s POV

                Hendricks bumped me lightly, companionably, with a shoulder as we headed towards my office. I smiled softly and returned the familiar gesture with ease; it had, after all, been some time since we’d gotten to do anything remotely like relaxing together. Of course, I had no idea when I’d begun to see planning what amounted to a hotel break in as relaxing, but obviously it had occurred at some point or another.

                “You know, I don’t think we’ve ever had girlfriends get along that well, John.” I choked my way into a laugh I in no way expected, my head shaking the whole time.

                “I truly hope you realize that he’d kill you if he heard that.” He shrugged.

                “That skinny little prick? I could break him over my knee if he even looked at me funny.” I smirked, tight, as we opened the office door and settled ourselves at our respective desks.

                “I assume you mean after he chars you beyond recognition, correct?”

                “I was hoping before, actually. You know, sneak up on him.”

                “Ah. And I’ll hold Ms. Gard back, yes? As you said, they get along unusually well.” A familiar ping, followed by an equally familiar whirring noise, filled the air as Hendricks started his laptop, while my older desktop flickered on with something that had always reminded me of the annoyed groan of someone who simply cannot be bothered.

                Hendricks didn’t respond, focusing instead on business, on the quick strikes of his fingers on the keys as he began to seek the information we required. I myself, having never been particularly skillful with such things, clicked about aimlessly as I waited for him, and finally he made a soft noise of triumph and began working on getting everything printed or copied where he wanted it. I shut my own computer off with only a faint wondering of why I’d turned it on in the first place.

                “I think it’s the magic,” he said, finally. “That makes them like each other so much, I mean. Probably they’ve got a lot to talk about.” I nodded, smiling faintly.

                “A lot of knowledge to share, I’d imagine. Of course, I have noticed that practitioners of that particular art seem to have an odd habit of either despising one another entirely or becoming the best friends in the universe; I suppose few have any sort of concept of middle grounds.” Hendricks nodded as if it were painful, rocking to his feet to collect the material he’d sent to the printer and walking it back over to me, pulling his chair to sit by my desk with me and laying it before us both.

                “It’s kind of a pain, isn’t it? For both of us. Not that they like each other, obviously; it’d be way worse for us both if they didn’t. But that they’re both so polarized and polarizing in general.” I smiled, more to myself than to him.

                “I suppose it can be on occasion. Other times, though… it’s quite useful. They listen to their gut instincts about people and generally seem to follow them without question. His gut tells him he likes me whether his mind has caught up with it or not.” He laughed and from there conversation shifted to the plans he’d found, done in neat black lines with small words done in a tight, architect’s hand. I slid a red pen from my desk and, after marking Ortega’s room, we began to plan the best entry and exit points we could use under Harry’s veiling potion.

                It was familiar territory for us both, I think, a comfortable place that we’d been far too long away from. The simple things become the most valuable to any man, I suppose, regardless of said man’s value of “simple”. For Harry, I decided, simple must be a day where the most outlandish thing that happens is him toasting a monster that’s taken up residence beneath his bed. That would, I decided, have to be quite the desperate monster, too; I’d glimpsed his bed before, and it was nothing any self-respecting monster should want to sleep beneath. Ah, but I was getting distracted; the primary point was that, after much arguing and no small amount of bitching on both of our parts, we got something we both liked worked out.

                As such, we let the office companionably and sought Ms. Gard and Harry in her lab. What we found, admittedly, floored us both.

                The two of them were hunched over Gard’s cauldron, Harry gesturing expansively and speaking about something that I assumed made no sense unless you were around for the whole conversation. Or, perhaps, unless you were intimately familiar with the mechanics of potion making.

                “Is that so? I don’t believe I’ve heard of it being done that way.” He nodded.

                “It’s an old method, but I’ve always preferred it; Bob told me about it after I fucked it up doing it the other way for the… how many times was it, Bob?” The skull, from its new place on Ms. Gard’s workbench, sighed and seemed to roll its eyes.

                “Thirty-seventh, Boss. You managed to do _something_ wrong thirty-seven times. I might’ve forgiven it had you fucked up something difficult consistently, but no, you just managed to pick a different small, simple detail every single time and screw it up in new and truly spectacular ways.” Harry tsk-ed at him in response, shaking his head.

                “It only exploded once, and that was a pretty minor one; we only used one fire extinguisher, in any case. That’s far from the worst travesty I’ve committed. Besides, the way I do it seems to work a little better anyway, right?” The skull laughed.

                “Almighty knows it does for you. Of course, I’m pretty sure stripping bare ass naked and spilling invisible ink on yourself would work better for you than the newer recipe does, but that probably doesn’t mean much, does it?” Harry pouted.

                “Shut up, Bob. How did I end up with such an amazing ass for an assistant, anyway?” The skull seemed to grin.

                “Shouldn’t you be saying that to the hot blonde beside you? I haven’t seen an ass like _that_ in nearly a century.” That seemed to draw Hendricks from the shocked reverie of one being exposed for the first time to a talking skull. I counted myself lucky to have gotten over that particular shocked reverie earlier in the day.

                “Quit flirting with my girlfriend,” he said, rather grumblier than was usual for him, and both Gard and the skull snickered. Had I been any other man in the same situation, I’d have called it somewhat disturbing.

                “Hey, sorry big guy. I figure you should take it as a compliment, though; not many guys can bag a Valkyrie and live to tell about it, much less date one long term. Good on ya,” the skull said, still grinning. Harry shook his head.

                “Is this really my life now? Man, I thought the zombies were bad. Serves me right for thinking, ‘it can’t get any worse’, right? I’ve seen enough movies to know that it always gets worse after someone says that.” Gard offered him a small, amused smile before she turned and grabbed eight relatively small glass tubes, each of which she dipped into the frothing liquid in her cauldron and capped with a cork. Following this, she distributed two to each of us.

                “Given that Harry brewed this, I suppose he’d best explain its use,” she stated, giving a small gesture for him to step forward and speak. He nodded, slipping his bottles into his duffle bag carefully.

                “One bottle to get in and one to get out; this amount should last between fifteen and thirty minutes, hopefully closer to thirty, but we should be able to manage well enough with what we’ve got. Which reminds me, Gard, would you mind bottling a little more? Michael, Murphy, Thomas, and probably Alessi are all coming along too. Anyway, this potion should make it so no one will pay us any mind no matter what we do; it’s kind of a mixture between my blending potion and a regular veil, but a whole hell of a lot less tiring to use. Oh, and it’ll taste gross, all potions do, but make sure you swallow all of it.” Though I felt a bit silly, I nodded seriously and tucked the potions into an inner pocket of my jacket, watching as Gard finished the rest of her bottling and handed them to Harry, who inclined his head in quick thanks. “You can keep the rest, if you want it; I don’t know, you might find a use for it. Or you could sell it, probably; there’s a decent market for my potions out there among the magical featherweights.” Gard smiled.

                “Thank you, Harry. I believe Mr. Vadderung would be quite interested in it; might I give him a bottle?” He shrugged.

                “Do what you want with it, I don’t really care. As far as I know there’s no expiration date on that stuff; I’ve used some I’ve bottled about two years prior at least once before.” The other bottles were tucked quickly into his duffle bag as well, and after Gard finished her bottling (the rest of it done with far larger bottles) we went into the sitting room instead, the bag and Bob remaining in the lab for what Harry called safe keeping.

* * *

 

                After Mr. Hendricks and I went over the plan to make certain that the both of them approved of it (which, of course, they did) we began to chat inanely about everything as far from the topic of our attack the next day as possible. I believe at one point we even discussed the relative health of Harry’s cat. Or, I suppose, Mr. Hendricks marveled at the fact that, even though Harry had owned him as long as we’d known him, and longer, it was still active enough to hiss and claw at Hendricks on site.

                “The damn thing’s a menace,” he said, glaring even as Harry laughed and called him a, “cute and fluffy little pussy cat”. “Your dog, though, I like him.” Harry snorted.

                “At least Mister is the plainest Vanilla a cat can be. Mouse got hit with a truck once and got up and walked around afterwards. I mean, he’s the one with the added deadliness of being a celestial guardian on top of the big pointy teeth and claws.” Gard shook her head.

                “I’ve always wondered, Mr. Dresden, how you managed to require such a creature.” He shrugged, grinning.

                “I didn’t; he acquired me. I don’t even like dogs, really, never have; always been a cat person. But I’m also no one to turn down a paycheck, obviously, so when this monk contacted me and asked me to get some puppies back from a demon, I of course didn’t refuse. So, I went after those demons, got some flaming shit flung at me, and saved all the adorable little puppies. On the ride to where I was supposed to meet the monk and get paid, though, one of those puppies decided to crawl out of the box and hide in my car. I didn’t figure it out until I got home, and by then the monk was already long gone, so I was stuck with a brand new notch eared Tibetan Temple Dog. He was really little back then, too; I could fit him into the palm of my hand, and he liked riding around in my coat pocket. Thomas was actually the one who made me realize just how big he was going to get, but, well… I don’t know, I think I just got attached to the silly mutt too.” She rubbed her head softly.

                “Only you, Mr. Dresden, could simply happen to gain the respect and the love of a creature monks spend decades learning to care for.” I had no understanding of the true strength of the dog, despite knowing that it was indeed far more powerful than an average dog, but even I had to agree with that statement. He seemed about to reply, but a sudden thought appeared to overtake him, then, and he changed his next statement to something entirely unrelated.

                “Hey, you think I could call my friends and Alessi really quick? I need to tell them to show up here in the morning, so we can hit the hotel.” I lifted my phone from its cradle, stretched over, and handed it to him. He gave me a quick thanks and started dialing his friends with the ease of many years of familiarity, and his conversations with them (after, of course, they got over the distant confusion and worry over him calling with my number) displayed the same ease, perhaps even more of it.

                The happiness he showed, the wide movements and the expressive twists to his face when he spoke to them, produced an odd, almost instinctual joy in me. I liked him happy, I liked him smiling; in general, I wished he’d do it more often.

                Still, though, it didn’t last long; it being relatively late by that point, he finished his conversations with them quickly and moved on to Alessi. This call produced a frown, stilted conversation that he very obviously tried to draw out, but Harry was equally obviously not having it, and hung up as quickly as was possible with a very final mash of his finger and a nod of his head that didn’t appear to have been an entirely conscious gesture. That did, however, seem to be the first time he truly noticed the time.

                “It being so late, you can certainly borrow a guest room for the evening,” I told him, knowing that he wouldn’t ask even if he wanted to stay, and an odd sort of gratefulness filled his warm eyes.

                “Thanks; it’s a long walk back to my apartment from here, and I’m honestly getting sort of tired. Ritual stuff wears me out fast.” He stood as he spoke, perhaps in an attempt to hide his expression from me, but I still saw that my offer had made him happy, that he was glad (in his own way) to be here. Gard, though, caught him gently by the sleeve and forced him to pause on his way out.

                “Your pentacle, Harry. I believe you stated that you wanted it polished, did you not? I would not mind doing so for you; I’m not particularly tired this evening, you understand.” His hand shot compulsively to his neck and his hand curled tightly enough around the amulet that I almost feared that it would cut into his skin. He swallowed once, convulsive, and shook his head.

                “I’ll do it, don’t worry about it. We’ll have a little time before we leave tomorrow,” he said, loosening and finally removing his grip with creeping gradualness, as if he were only just realizing that she wasn’t going to lunge forward and tear it from his neck. She nodded, uncaring, as if his behavior were entirely common, entirely rational. Still, I supposed then was not the finest of times to mention it, and as such simply took him by the arm and led him to a spare room by mine. He offered me another grin and flopped heavily onto the bed, kicked his boots off, and lay himself down as though he’d lived there his entire life. Admittedly, the vision made me happier than was proper, or, perhaps, even normal.

                I pulled a chair to the left a few feet, so that it was settled by his bed, and after that produced no ill response, settled myself into it comfortable, he yawned thickly and stretched, his back making slight noises of protest.

                “You know, I’ve oft wondered about that necklace of yours. It’s not exactly a common fashion statement; is it an heirloom of some sort?” Not that I particularly expected it was. He had little family and had known them for a relatively short time, and from what little I knew, I was rather certain that his father had been far from a rich man; such were not the prime conditions for passing on heirlooms. He took it in hand again, gentle, this time, as gentle as the smile curling his lips.

                “Kind of, I guess. I’ll tell you about it if you tell me why you called Elaine.” The answer made me laugh, a bit; when had he learned pragmatism?

                “Curiosity, I think; you speak often and loudly, but seemingly never about yourself. A woman from your past, though, a foster sister and a lover, even… I imagined that she’d tell me all I would want to know, how you came here, why you chose my city.” He hadn’t really dropped his smile, but there it came larger, his thumb swiping over the face of the pentacle, rubbing over an area that almost seemed as if a stone were missing from it.

                “And all you figured out was that I burned my foster father alive as a sixteen year old. Disappointing, huh?”

                “I learned enough, I think. Now, your pentacle?” He snorted.

                “It’s not a very interesting story. My mother died not long after she gave birth to me; she gave this to my dad and told him to give it to me as soon as I was big enough to wear it, said it’d be a piece of her that I could keep. And then she said that I had his eyes, that she was happy that whoever she looked at last, those would be the eyes she saw, instead of her own. Those were her last words, actually. My dad always told me she looked at me until the end, that he was barely able to take me from her arms and call 911 after she was gone.” He turned the little thing in his fingers, flipping it over his knuckles masterfully, as I’d seen some people do with coins or cards. A magician’s move, if I wasn’t mistaken, or at the very least something that the majority of magicians could do.

                “Houdini,” I said, shocked at the sudden realization and perhaps speaking a bit too loudly as a result. He jolted.

                “Huh?”

                “Your name; you were named after Houdini, weren’t you? Harry Houdini.” He blinked, nodding slowly.

                “Yeah. My dad was a magician himself, and damn good. Probably could’ve made a fine living, if he didn’t do so many free shows at hospitals and stuff, but that just wasn’t the kind of guy he was. He used to know David Copperfield, actually, before he made it really big. Where’d that come from, by the way?” A faint happiness at being able to surprise him welled up in me; it was truly the rare pleasure.

                “Call it an epiphany, if not a particularly important one. The way you’re turning that amulet, I’ve seen magicians do that often.” He nodded again.

                “It helps keep your fingers limber, for the sleight of hand. He taught me a decent amount before he died, in preparation for becoming his assistant, but I was never old enough to put it to use. I learned more later, on my own; this lady who liked me at the orphanage gave me a book about magic tricks once, about a week before she retired. Over the years I honestly picked up enough that I could probably pull off a decent stage show myself, if I had to. I mean, I’m far from my namesake, but I guess I’m no slouch either.” I’ve always thought that the general consensus on Wizards was that they were wise, aged beings, beings who studied for centuries and who had their craft to an art. I don’t quite recall anyone who would describe them as “quirky” but then I supposed they’d never met Harry Dresden.

                “A Wizard who knows magic tricks. I’ll assume the irony doesn’t escape you?” He snuffed.

                “Never. You want to know the really funny thing, though? Most Wizards are totally _fascinated_ by it. I think we just get so used to seeing the fantastic done with our own will, to see someone do it with nothing more than illusion amazes us. I’ve met some people who were certain I had to be cheating and using my actual magic, until I showed them how to do the trick.” I believe the most annoying thing about Harry is that despite how irrational he can be, he does, on occasion, make a confusing amount of sense, display an understanding of things it would seem he wouldn’t care to understand.

                “I’ll admit to being curious as to a trick of that caliber, Harry.” He yawned again and nuzzled into his pillow.

                “Remind me some time and I’ll pull out my cards and show you a few things.” Likely, that shouldn’t have made me as happy as it did, but I’ve never claimed to have entirely rational responses to that particular man. In fact, more often I’ve claimed the exact opposite. I believe I’d have probably attempted to carry on the conversation for a bit longer, but upon glancing down at him, I found that he’d fallen quite suddenly into a relatively deep sleep, snoring quietly and everything.

                He looked oddly… sweet, lying there like that, relaxed and innocent. The constant, if slight, furrow of his brows had relaxed and smoothed over, and his lips were slightly parted to make way for the small, happy sighs that drifted from him periodically. His legs curled up towards his chest, and I shook my head with faint annoyance, standing and carefully working the blankets out from underneath him so that I could cover him with them. He curled just slightly tighter into himself and nuzzled his pillow, sparing a faint smile even in sleep.

                I should’ve left after that, I know. I had, after all, no reason to stay; I found, however, that I could not do so, could not leave him. It was rare to see him with his guard dropped, to see him so calm, and, selfish though it perhaps was, I wanted to take advantage. I have, as I’m sure everyone knows, never claimed to be above taking advantage of a favorable situation when it presented itself to me, and this particular favorable situation had as good as gift wrapped itself for me.

                I reached out, very carefully, very slowly, and let my hand card through the mop of his hair, brush it softly away from his face and behind his ears. The noise he made at that was quiet and almost childish, as was the soft press of his head against my hand and the whine when I made as if I was planning to move it. Once again, opportunity dictated that I enjoy any moment in which he actually wanted me to touch him, and so I allowed my hand to continue stroking through his hair, tender, calm, likely as relaxing for me as it was for him. I hold that that is the reason why I myself drifted to sleep in that position, the sheer reduction of stress the action offered me.

* * *

 

Harry’s POV

                I don’t exactly know what happened, but I woke up about an hour before dawn, that day, despite being warm and rather comfortable even though I’d knocked out in my clothes and the room’s light was still burning overhead.

                I couldn’t quite recall getting under the blankets, though. Oh, well; maybe I’d wiggled underneath them at some point during the night. That wasn’t exactly something that had never happened, after all. Either way, I was pretty much certain that I wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep with the light blazing overhead, so I dragged myself up to my feet as lazily as I could while still making actual progress, and stumbled over to the light switch. It was only on my way back from flicking it off that I noticed a body lying limply in the chair beside my bed.

                Admittedly, I probably jumped a little. After all, I knew I was in John’s house; for all I knew, a free dead body came free with every visit. I realized pretty quickly that the body was breathing, though, and that it belonged to none other than John himself. I let out a deep puff of air and dropped back onto the bed like a stone.

                “Hell’s Bells, Johnny, you’re the first man I’ve ever met who could terrify me when he was sound asleep.” He let out something like a sigh in response, his body shifting in the chair. He’d be bound to have a crick from hell in his neck when he woke up; that didn’t look like anything close to the most comfortable chair in the world. In fact, if anything, it looked like it could be a contender for the most uncomfortable one. I shook my head and thought about picking him up and putting him into the bed, for the last few hours, before I realized that there was no way in hell that I could pick him up without him waking up, and possibly no way in hell that I could pick him up at all anyway.

                And then I thought about waking him up instead. That would probably work better; he could go to his own room, get at least a few comfortable hours of sleep. After all, he wouldn’t be much good all tensed up and in pain. So, I leaned forward and settled my hand on his shoulder, shaking softly. He whispered something, quiet and basically impossible to understand. I tilted my head; he hadn’t really struck me as the talks-in-his-sleep sort of guy. Not that I’d ever spent much time imagining what kind of guy he was while asleep, but talking in his sleep seemed like something he’d see as too out of his control.

                I was kind of curious about it, though, so I shook him again, and this time his lips twitched up into a faint smile before he spoke.

                “H’rry,” I heard, “Harry.” I jerked away as if he’d struck a match on me, as if he was suddenly going to fling me bodily across the room for daring to touch him as he slept. Then I realized he hadn’t actually woken up, that that was what he’d said in his sleep the first time, too, nothing more complicated than my name.

                “John?” I asked, my voice barely over a whisper, and I leaned close to him again so I could hear whatever he said in response. “John, you should probably wake up and go to your own room, now, okay? You’ll feel like shit in the morning if you don’t.” He almost appeared to be shaking his head, at that, but I didn’t totally buy that. He was John Marcone; John Marcone does not shake his head like a petulant toddler when someone tells him to go to bed. Or, at least, I never imagined that he would.

                “Wanna stay with you,” he breathed, his eyes still delicately shut, and I gaped.

                “Come on, John, it’s Harry, wake up.” Another quiet puff of air as I shook him gently, and he, in what appeared to be an attempt to push against my touch, ended up flopping against my chest, his forehead in the crook of my neck and my arms supporting him.

                “Love you,” he mumbled, almost nuzzling against me, and I reacted somewhat violently, I hate to admit. I half pushed him back into the chair where he fell limp again, still relatively soundly asleep although he did groan and squirm a little at the sudden shift in position, then. I gave up on awakening him partly out of my own selfish desire to not actually talk to him after he’d said that, after I’d heard that. I buried myself back under the blankets as if that would stop me from having heard him say that to me.

                I couldn’t even say he’d been dreaming of someone else, unless I took the large and probably stupid leap of logic that he knew and spent a lot of time with another Harry who happened to sound remarkably like me, and even I wasn’t quite that dumb.

                Admittedly, the idea of him loving me terrified me, a little. Love was… it was weird, it was important. It wasn’t to be taken lightly, as a joke, that’s for sure. And love from a man like John… probably I could take those sentiments and multiply them by a hundred. I licked my lips, I squeezed my eyes shut. How was I supposed to talk to him the next morning? Like I always did? I wasn’t sure I could. Well, at the least, I couldn’t let him know that I knew. I mean, I’m ass and all, but I don’t exactly take pride in messing around with people’s hearts. If he had started to love me at some point (and if he had, he hid it damn well, so obviously he didn’t want me to know) I didn’t want to… to hurt him, or anything like that.

                Still, would it really be so bad, if I let on that I’d heard him say that? He was… I did like him, however unwillingly. And I was pretty sure I’d never had such a violent reaction to anyone before, good or bad; he and I went off at each other like firecrackers more often than not, and sometimes the ensuing explosion resulted in something good, in a mutual enemy going down. Other times, it resulted in us taking a swing at each other. I had to admit that I normally felt… bolstered, after I spoke to him, though. I got to argue and fight and I got to talk to someone who understood and I got to laugh at good jokes and I got to look him in the eyes and I got to do it all at once; I knew I couldn’t say that with anyone else.

                Not to mention the fact that he was… well, like I’d told him, he was far from ugly. And he was amusing and smart and kind if he liked you and. No. I do not need to be thinking about this, at all. I do not actually have a schoolgirl crush on Marcone no matter what it sounds like or what people say.

                I would just act like always, I decided, like nothing had changed, at least for a little while, until a situation came about that I could let on that I knew without, I don’t know, embarrassing him or something. Of course, what his men had been saying made a lot more sense now, at least; they’d just thought it was reciprocated when it wasn’t. Isn’t. It isn’t, okay? Jeez. Anyway, yeah, I’d be normal until I could let him know that I knew, and then I’d let him down gently. I’d tell him I was still willing to work with him. Maybe even be something like friends with him. And that would be the end of it. This didn’t, wouldn’t, change anything.      


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm a little early on the posting this time, but I promise it's necessity, given that I'll be out tomorrow morning before I have a chance to post it, thus resulting in the chapter not getting posted until pretty late in the day. Nonetheless, I hope you all enjoy this chapter! There's only one left to this fic, at which point the Bilbo/Smaug fic will be posted, and, following that, possibly some work with a new fandom, although that kind of depends on if the fic cooperates with me. If it doesn't, well, I've got some more Hobbit stuff in the works that would surely be serviceable.

                The next morning, the house was a riot; all of my people had arrived at relatively the same time and were making themselves at home in the way that really means you’re about three steps off from trashing someone’s house. Thomas seemed to be taking particular pleasure in systematically stacking all the throw pillows in the sitting room into what can only be described as a fort in the middle of the couch. I didn’t even bother mentioning it when I came downstairs, although he did offer to let me join him inside. It _did_ look pretty cozy, though, I have to admit. And the sheer agony in Johnny’s expression when he saw it made it totally worth it to look considering for a moment before I shook my head in response.

                “Some of those are obscenely expensive, you know,” he told me, and I snickered, because of course they were.

                “Yeah? Well, see, you’ve got to understand something: Thomas is a huge pig. He will reduce any dwelling in which he is granted even a minor presence to a slob’s heaven in a matter of mere moments. You’re lucky he didn’t decide the stuffing would make a nice bedding. Or turn your wall hangings into so much confetti in an incredibly thorough feat that your cat probably still dreams of emulating one day. Or sleep with joggers and leave suspicious stains on your favorite rug by the fireplace where your _dog_ sleeps, goddamn it. I really hate you, you know that, Thomas?” He laughed from his pillow fort, and I wished, very suddenly, that we’d grown up together somewhere far away from where both of us grew up.

                “I love you too, Harry; it’s almost sweet, how much you care,” he told me, voice playfully lofty. I huffed.

                “It’ll be sweet when I come over there and kick your ass. I _still_ haven’t gotten that stain out, and I even used a cleaning potion on it!” Thomas released the frustrated sigh of a person who has had an argument too many times and already knows exactly how it’s going to go.

                “I told you, Harry, it’s just grape juice!”

                “Grape juice is not that color!” Johnny released a miserable noise and settled his hand gently on my upper arm, stopping the argument before it could get any dumber. I relegated myself to only a tiny flinch at the touch, a tiny memory of what I’d heard the night before. I don’t think he noticed, for once, and for that I allowed myself to be at least a tiny bit grateful. “Whatever. Is Alessi here yet?” I asked, and everyone answered in the negative. Of course. Ah well; it’d give me the time I’d mentioned to get my pentacle all shiny, anyway.

                I grabbed the polish and a rag from Gard’s lab, along with my duffel bag, and when I got back, I found John, Gard, and Hendricks going over the plan with everybody. The sight of it made me smile, a little, but I don’t exactly know why. Anyway, I crawled into the pillow fort with Thomas (I couldn’t help it, okay? Shut up) and worked on buffing out the various dings and scrapes that the poor piece of jewelry had endured since my last attempt at cleaning it. Thomas watched my hands out of the corner of his eyes with familiar, familial pleasure. He’d been privy to this ritual of mine more often than most, and by now, I’m pretty sure he knew the motion of my hands during the process as well as I did.

                I bumped him softly with my shoulder, my legs curled to one side around me, and he turned his focus entirely to Marcone even though it seemed to make him something close to sick to do it. I never would figure out why he had such an inherent distaste for the man; I mean, it wasn’t like they’d interacted all that often, not really, and as far as I knew, I’d never seen them exchange a particularly unkind word to one another.

                Anyhow, the plan didn’t take all that long to go over, and I finished my polishing about ten minutes after, at which point I hung my shiny, new looking amulet back around my neck. It settled between my collar bones without any fuss by virtue of the fact that it had simply always been there, for as long as I could remember. We sat mostly silently, beyond Murphy tossing a few particularly snippy comments towards Marcone (and at least I could understand why she disliked him so intensely), who bore it with the grace of one who has grown uncomfortably used to receiving scathing comments from the good people of the police force.

                Alessi strolled in about twenty minutes late in what I assumed was the dictionary antonym for combat gear. I was pretty sure that if he got any monster goo on that suit, he’d start crying. Loudly. Possibly forever. I sighed.

                “John, do you have anything that’ll fit that dumbass? He’s not going to go against Arianna in Armani.” Alessi offered me a pale glare, walking up to mine and Thomas’ hidey hole and crossing his arms at us both. Embarrassingly enough, Thomas and I both stuck our tongues out at him. Thomas was the only one who pulled me actually a little too roughly into his side, though. It would’ve been really bad if we’d both done that, I think. I guess it was nice to feel the outline of his pentacle tucked under his shirt, though, over his heart, where it always lay. I wished, sometimes, that we could both be allowed to wear them openly, but it’d be a long, long time before that was anything close to a possibility, and I knew it.

                “And why not? You’re sitting there in that ridiculous leather thing.” I grinned.

                “I’ve been fighting in this coat since I _got_ this coat, pal. Plus it’s laden with enough protective enchantments and wards and things to stop the force of at least a train and a half. Mostly I just like it when people are doing the whole shooting at me thing, though. Really helps when the guns aren’t new enough for me to break on sight. So, Johnny, do you have anything or not? Or maybe Hendricks. Probably they’re closer to the same size.” John nodded, smirking faintly to himself, like he’d just won some kind of major victory or something, and led Alessi off someplace. When he came back, he was in black, light clothes, probably with Kevlar underneath, and I gave it tacit approval as I wormed my way out of the fort with Thomas.

                “What now?” Alessi questioned, impatient; were I to guess, he’d never been much for fighting, at least not like this. I allowed myself to be confused by that for only a moment before I recalled the sheer diversity of John’s… business. There were probably plenty of posts where military style operations were not at all required. Anyway. I passed out the potions from my duffel bag, leaving only the two I’d use, and watched Alessi gaze at them confusedly for a moment before I spoke.

                “One to get in and one to get out. Don’t drink it until we’re about a block away, otherwise it’ll wear off too fast to do what we need to do. I’m hoping for a quick in and out assassination kind of thing, but I’m really not expecting it to work out that way; Arianna’s old, and smart, and powerful. She might not notice us immediately, but as soon as we get into her room, she’s probably going to be able to smell us, even with this potion.” My friends all nodded, as did John and his. Alessi still looked lost and in over his head, though. Still, I’d promised him that he could get his shot in, and I don’t often go back on my word if I can help it.

                We didn’t talk much from there, anyway; instead, we all went outside and piled into two cars, our mission setting us all maybe just a touch on edge. I don’t think that excused how many times Alessi grabbed at me, though. Probably he more deserved Thomas’ continued glaring ire more that John did, and I found it far more amusing when he was faced with it anyway. Thomas has really good glaring ire, if you didn’t know.

                It didn’t much help with the tension that fizzled in the air, though, the tight certainty of the danger of what we were about to do. I told them when to stop the car and down the potions. No one spared a second glance to the people who disappeared from inside the vehicles; a handy effect, I guess, of the essential nonexistence I’d thrown us into by way of the potion. Gard had raised her eyebrow after she drank it, had offered her compliments, and I could already see her plans to take it and modify it, to test the bottles I’d left with her down to their bare bones, to sell it and use it and make it perfect. She was clever, and she was more dangerous than she liked to let on. In that way, I think she reminded me a little of Thomas.

                We walked slowly, and I let out a tight-bowstring laugh as I heard Alessi still gagging at the taste. Probably I should’ve warned him, but then, I’m good at holding grudges and I can admittedly be a little petty and a little bitter when the mood strikes me. Besides, I’m pretty sure he just thought he got a bad bottle because the rest of us, all used to the always icky taste of potions, didn’t really react.

                I tried to relax when we walked into the hotel behind a kindly looking older couple and then followed them into the elevator, although we rode it about two floors higher than they did before we climbed out. When we got off, a little boy glared suspiciously at the falsely empty space I was occupying, after I accidentally bumped him a little in my haste to get away from the finicky machinery and to the door.

                It was one of those card-reader things, not one of the old-fashioned ones with keys, so it took nothing more than a touch for me to break it. I smiled and pushed the door open, our party forcing our way quickly inside and shutting the door behind us. Arianna stood in the middle of the room, smiling, her eyes fixed on my face and her arms crossed. She strolled over to me easily, her hips swaying, and stroked her hand down my cheek. My potion chose that moment to kick out on all of us, leaving us bare and exposed in the face of a truly deadly predator. She chuckled, very faintly, settling two fingers lightly on my pulse, licking her lips as she felt it thump under her touch.

                “Harry, darling, it’s been so long, hasn’t it? I’ve missed you fiercely,” she said, leaning closer to me, everyone else, including myself, frozen with shock. “Your smell, your sweat, your fear. I terrify you, don’t I? How sweet.” I rucked around in my pocket until I came out with the folded sunshine Gard had given me.

                It shone like a supernova in the smallish room, blinding her and sending her rearing back, her flesh mask pealing from her face and her body to reveal the inky black, flabby thing underneath. She hissed, baring her teeth at me, hiding her eyes desperately with her hands, and then we were falling on her like thunder, me and my friends, while Marcone, Gard, and Hendricks stayed back and fought more at a distance. Alessi, I was pretty sure, had scrambled outside, but I wouldn’t swear on it or anything.

                I, knowing that using fire would be a really, really stupid thing to do just then, took aim at her with a burst of force. She decided to chance getting struck by Thomas’ wickedly curved blade instead and dived away. A bedside table shattered into many not even remotely bedside table shaped shards. Thomas’ sword nicked her arm as she spun around him and hit the backs of his knees, bringing him down hard. A bullet caught her face, but no blood poured from the wound. All of that was down in her belly, full and taut. She’d fed recently, to be sure. Michael’s holy blade flashed towards her, blazing with light, and she scrambled away from Thomas in order to escape it. I allowed an equal quantity of light to flood my pentacle, helping Michael heard her into a corner, and Murphy let loose on her midsection with a hail of bullets from her tiny Russian automatic. Blood poured, fountain-like, from the wounds, and very shortly Marcone and his crew could be found joining her in her endeavor. They stopped only when the creature was prone on the floor, not breathing, belly gone flat.

                I let out a deep breath; it was rare that we came out of a fight like this uninjured, but we’d pretty much overwhelmed her through sheer numbers alone. It was, I decided, a spark of good luck, and I laughed. I don’t get lucky often, and probably I should’ve known better than to turn my back, getting ready to down the second potion and get the hell away from the hotel before the cops came a-calling in response to the gunfire.

                A heavy weight came down hard on my back, and a wet, slimy tongue licked desperately up my neck before deadly sharp teeth sunk into the flesh. I went almost immediately limp, the narcotic saliva sending my mind muzzily away as it sunk into the soft, pleasurable feeling. My heart pounded at the same tempo as her sucking against my throat, and I moaned in time with her, managing only one more desperate flinging of force that went wide and destroyed the bed (and a very pretty lamp) instead of the monster on top of me.

                I was so far gone in such a short time that I barely even noticed Thomas, his eyes flaming with wicked chrome, his skin glowing, pluck her off of me, throw her to the ground, and gore her through the stomach with his kukri. I giggled, rolling to my back and staring up at the nice pattern on the ceiling, blood dripping sluggishly from twin holes in my neck, drying messily on my skin and the floor. I did wonder who’d messed up the furniture in the pretty, pretty room, though. At least, I figured, they hadn’t also messed up the equally pretty, soft carpeting. I really liked that carpet. I wiggled on it a little and giggled again, to newly silent air.

* * *

 

Marcone’s POV

                Raith ripped at the other vampire savagely, his blade tearing its leathery, black skin open and spilling what little blood had remained in her on the floor. It twitched violently underneath him, but he kept it pinned with terrifying ease, his eyes flashing monstrously with cold silver light. Alessi stepped back inside the room from where he’d run, apparently only now willing to fight, and looked faintly sick at the sight of Raith’s sudden cruelty.

                “You _bitch_ ,” I heard him snarl, “No one is allowed to hurt him.” Over and over, a mantra that changed only slightly if it changed at all. Harry himself lay sprawled in the middle of the floor, laughing at nothing in particular, his face and his body gone slack. Carpenter hovered over him worriedly, wiping away the blood at his neck and pressing the same cloth over the small wounds, already beginning to scab over, from what I could tell, to make certain that he didn’t bleed anymore.   

                “What the hell,” Alessi whispered, “Christ, what the hell is he?” Murphy stepped over to Raith cautiously, her hands held out nonthreateningly, but still he growled at her when she touched his shoulder.

                “Thomas, Thomas, you need to stop. She’s dead, Thomas, look at her. You need to stop.” His hand tensed around the blade, and I saw it, the moment of indecision, the moment where he thought about taking her down too, feasting on her, maybe then turning his attention to the rest of us, but then, it was gone. He relaxed almost totally, the sword falling limply from his hands as he gazed dispassionately down at the tattered vampire corpse beneath him.

                “Let’s go,” he said, cold, as Michael helped Harry stand.

                “You’re so warm!” he told the Knight, giggling almost sweetly, pressing hard into his side and squeezing his upper arm. Michael patted him on the head like a child, and Thomas took a deep breath, shaking his head.

                “Empty Night, he’s stoned. What the hell are we going to do with him?” Murphy shook her head, an expression of common indulgence on her face.

                “We can take him back to his apartment; I’ll look after him until he sleeps it off.” No. He was going absolutely nowhere with them like that; he was vulnerable, entirely beyond himself and obviously willing to cling to anything moving. He looked around blearily, still attempting to merge himself with Carpenter. And Alessi was watching thoughtfully, obviously plotting a way to get to Harry himself, and I certainly didn’t trust them to keep him at bay, to keep him from sniffing about where he wasn’t wanted.

                “He’s coming back to my home with me, actually. I’m quite certain that I have more experience in matters such as these than any of you.” His eyes, dark and normally intelligent, turned towards me full of a cloudy, distant haze.

                “Like hell!” Raith said, crossing his arms and taking one threatening step towards me. Hendricks fingered his gun while Ms. Gard reached almost compulsively for the bag at her side that was almost certainly full of runes. “Who knows what you’ll do to him when he’s like that? I’ll take him back to my apartment with me.” Carpenter sighed.

                “Charity and I have extra space for him; it’s been some time since he’s come by for a visit anyway. The kids, I’m sure, would love to have him for dinner once he comes back to himself.” Harry wiggled, a little, apparently ready now to stand under his own power, and Michael obligingly let him go. He wavered, for a few moments, but eventually seemed to understand how standing and walking worked. He laughed again, apparently full of pleasure at the new discovery, and took one slow, careful step towards me. The success set him to laughing yet again, and he took another.

                “Hey, I’m a neutral party,” Alessi said, attempting to sound reasonable, “I could-,” he tried, but was met with a chorus that amounted to a flat, simple “no”. Harry walked a bit faster now, almost at a regular pace, and finally came into contact with me, his arms wrapping tight and octopus-like around my shoulders. He grinned at me, somewhat childish, innocent, and hid his face in my neck. His hair tickled the side of my face, I noted, but I found I didn’t particularly mind as I settled my own hand at his waist to help keep him supported. A sea of shocked, somewhat appalled faces turned to face us.

                “You’re really warm too!” he said, amazed, “Maybe even warmer! I like you! Hey, hey, what’s your name?” I bit back a slight smile.

                “John,” I answered, and he nodded, very serious.

                “I wanna go with Johnny!” he said, clear, concise, and pressed ever closer to my side. That made me smile despite myself, my gaze almost certainly going soft as I looked down at the pliant shape wrapped around me, a limpet to the nth degree.

                “I suppose there’s little arguing with that, is there?” I asked, and they all gritted their teeth.

                “You do anything to him, Marcone, you’re going to wish I arrested you,” Murphy said, and Thomas nodded.

                “Ditto,” he stated. Carpenter only offered me a shockingly kind smile, but a very particular darkness that one does not often associate with holy men filled his eyes and informed me that he was very, very good with that sword of his, and there were certain people that he was entirely willing to shed his good nature for. And then we all downed the potions (me carefully helping Harry down his portion, and wiping his lips with my thumb afterwards, chuckling even at the disgusted look on his face even as we all made our way out of the hotel and back to the cars.

                Harry rode with me, of course, half on my lap and leaning with his head on my shoulder, sighing happily the whole way. I had the other car, the one with his friends and Alessi, drop them all off at their various places of residence. He chattered inanely the whole way, talking rather a lot about absolutely nothing in particular, apparently plucking topics of conversation from the empty air.

                Most of them involved how comfy my shoulder was, or how nice I was, or how much he liked me, and my car, and oh, I had really nice shoes too, didn’t I? But then there were a few that… didn’t. He’d tell me, you like me too, right? I can tell, I know you do, it’s okay. I just said I liked you, didn’t I? You can tell me, it’s fine, it’s fine, I like you I like you I like you. Nosing at my neck, squeezing my wrist like it was a lifeline, looking at me with adoration in eyes that I’d only barely seen look at me with something even close to like before. I only responded when I had to, stroking his shoulder, his side, his hip, calming him when he seemed to be working into some kind of frenzy. Hendricks would peek at us occasionally in the rearview mirror, and I caught sight of Gard smirking her teasing, knowing smirk more than once, but beyond that, there was no response to any of it, as if this were a totally normal occurrence.

                …Actually, given the life of Harry Dresden, it might be. I was grateful nonetheless to pull up to my home, to help Harry upstairs to bed. I tried to leave him there to settle on his own, but he refused to release me. His grip was better than I’d imagined it would be as he reeled me back to his bedside, still staring up at me with those damnable wide, kind, soft eyes.

                “Don’t leave me,” he said, quiet, “Stay with me.” Once upon a time, I might’ve killed to hear him say that. I’d probably have been able to appreciate it more had he not been totally and completely doped on vampire venom. Still, it wasn’t as if I could refuse such a simple request, and it was probably for the best that he not be left alone in this condition anyway. I sat by his bed, and his hand slid down my arm to grasp my own hand in a loose, lazy grip. I couldn’t resist a small chuckle.

                “God help us all if you remember this later,” I murmured, and he blinked slowly, uncomprehending.

                “Why? It’s nice. You have… you feel nice. I don’t… it’s been so long. I miss being with people. With anyone. And I like you. I really. You’re nice.” He looked frustrated with himself, with his inability to speak properly, to express what he wanted to say. I hushed him gently.

                “It’s alright; just rest, Harry. We’ll speak when you feel more up to it.” He laughed, almost bitter, squeezing my hand and gazing at me endlessly.

                “No we won’t. I’ll forget and you won’t remind me. You’re afraid.” I tensed. It’s not often that people call me afraid, and I generally don’t take to it very kindly or very well. When it was Harry Dresden, however out of it, saying it to me… I laughed.

                “Why would I be scared to tell you about your inane ramblings, Harry? You don’t frighten me.” His thumb ran across my wrist, rubbed there softly, and it appeared he was getting his motor coordination back, if nothing else.

                “Yeah, I do. Or, my reaction does. I know you… that you’re in love with me. I heard you, when you dreamt. And I… it scares me too because love is. I don’t. People get hurt, when they love me. You shouldn’t. And when I heard you say it I tried to pretend like nothing was… like I hadn’t. And it didn’t work, not really, because I was happy to hear it. Because I think I love you too, I just. I’m scared too. It’s okay to be scared.” His voice flashed from clear to muzzy to clear again, and I knew he wouldn’t be under the saliva’s influence for much longer. Still, his words had me frozen where I sat, frozen with his hand around mine.

                He couldn’t really know what he was saying, I knew that. He couldn’t really mean it. He’d be upset, if he knew what he was saying, but beyond his frustration at his inability to articulate, he looked calm. Happy, even, blissful.

                I wanted, for a moment, to take advantage. Obviously he had no issues with it, with me, in that state. He _liked_ me, loved me, even. But when he came back to himself… I wasn’t going to be responsible for hurting him even more.

                “Please cease your blathering,” I whispered, listening as he laughed and getting ready to stand up and send in someone else, perhaps Ms. Gard, to watch him when he was suddenly everywhere at once, his arms around me, his mouth pressing desperately against mine, his eyes squeezed shut. He pulled away with almost painful slowness.

                “Believe me,” he said, “I’m not lying. Look at me, John, do I look high still? I was afraid. I shouldn’t have been, and I’m sorry for it. I know how you feel, and I’m okay with it. I want to try, John, because… you piss me off, okay? More than probably anybody can. But you also make me laugh. You’re clever, usually, and you’re helpful. I don’t always agree with what you do, I know that, and I also know that I’m going to be making a lot of compromises with you and with myself to stay out of it, but I know that you’ve never done a bad thing for no reason, and your reason is generally a good one. I know your position is necessary, and when I saw what happened without you… Hell’s Bells, Johnny, I was wishing you back every day. I missed you, so, so much. I think maybe I realized how I felt then, when Alessi took me, but now I… I’m ready, John. Please.” I kissed him myself, this time, hard and there and real and Christ, Christ this was perfect.

                I’d imagined this moment so many times, sometimes nightly. I’d dreamed of him saying yes, affection painting every angle of his face, every flash of his eyes. I’d never thought it would actually happen. I’d never dreamed of how beautiful he, that moment, would really be. I think, then, that I simply must have seen heaven. He gripped me almost desperately, and a tiny smile was quirking his lips when I pulled away.

                “Can I take that as a yes?” he asked, breathy, licking his lips, and I nodded.

                “If you’d like to, certainly.” At which point he fell backwards, yanking me laughingly across the bed with him. His face was flushed with happiness and also something else, something more passionate, something deeper, and he seemed unwilling to stop touching me for long, for much more than a moment. It was as if he thought I’d flee, but I suppose it was helpful; if he was holding me, I didn’t have to hold him. I could be certain that he was there. And then his mood changed completely all of a sudden, a total and complete 180. “What is it?” I asked, worrying, oddly enough, that he’d already changed his mind.

                “I’ve still got to fulfill my end of my deal with Alessi,” he said, groaning, thumping his head once against the mattress. I chuckled, relaxing, and twisted around with him to lay in the bed correctly, for once heedless of the fact that our shoes would certainly be getting it completely filthy. His head dropped against my chest, our blooming relationship apparently giving me free reign to lay on me however and whenever he wished to do so. I wondered if any of his other partners had gotten that particular privilege or if I was just _special_.

                “You don’t truly have to, you know. I’m certain I can deal with him expediently on my own.” He snickered, shaking his head easily and curling closer.

                “Yeah, I do. I made the promise, and I’ll keep it; that’s how it goes. Call him for me, will you? Tell him to meet me out front in the morning and we’ll do… whatever it is he’s wanting to do for the day.” I sighed, shaking my own head in response.

                “I can think of plenty of things he’d like to spend the day doing with you, Harry, and I’d quite honestly prefer that none of them happened.” He punched my chest once, a bit harder than was necessary, in my opinion, his lips pursed.

                “Shut up, weren’t you listening to the deal I made? He’s not allowed. So call him.” His voice was hard, and I’m admittedly quite weak in the face of a request from him, even if it’s against my better judgment, thus the reason why I could generally be found giving him my people and myself no matter how idiotic the mission or how meagre the reward. He did, however, often grant me at least a kind smile, as he did this time, when I called the bastard on my cell and made the meeting.

                He seemed to settle some, at that, relax against me again and tangle our legs together familiarly, as if he wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t get up without him knowing. Still, I wasn’t complaining; more than anything, I was comfortable, there, my head tipped back, his body a welcome weight over mine, my hand making cyclic rounds from his shoulder to his hip, sometimes pausing to trace the letters of my name or vague, pointless shapes.

                I had nearly put myself to sleep when he next reacted, and this time he seemed to have even less reason to do anything than before; he laughed, rather loudly and equally suddenly. I jolted, and he took it as the request for a reason that it was.

                “I just realized that I’ve somehow been acting like I was in a relationship with you for like two years. I feel kind of bad for thinking that all of your people were really incredibly stupid now. Also, um, I’m going to have to tell my friends about this.” There were quite a few things I could’ve said in response to that, and I wanted to say the majority of them. He would, at that point, deserve it. Instead, though, I exercised the self-control so many know me for and gently pressed his head back down against my chest, curled very slightly around him, and went to sleep. I can only assume that he joined me shortly after he finished giggling madly.

* * *

 

Harry’s POV

                Funnily enough, one doesn’t imagine a man like John Marcone agonizing over anything, especially not after you’ve just confessed love for him and have spent the entirety of an evening cuddling with him, but he apparently agonizes over everything, secretly.

                I awoke that morning to him pacing like a madman, his hands behind his back, his eyes worried. It would’ve been really funny, if I hadn’t felt a tiny bit bad for the poor guy. I mean, he looked absolutely miserable, honestly, like the worst thing on the planet was about to happen to him and no one was bothering to care or try to fix it or anything.

                I wondered, for a moment, if he’d maybe gotten a call informing him that he was going to be the first manned mission to Mars, or that it had been discovered that he needed, desperately, to move to China. I couldn’t think of many other reasons for him to look quite that depressed, honestly.

                “Is there an execution on or something?” I asked, yawning, and he attempted a slight smile. It was, quite honestly, not at all up to par. “Jeez, you’re going to wear a hole in the floor.” Another faint smile as he came back over to me, sitting by me as I sat up and straightened my messy clothes, wishing faintly that I had a change here.

                “Don’t go,” he told me, and I heaved a heavy, annoyed sigh.

                “Damn it, John, I’m not going to let people start going around thinking I’m a Wizard who doesn’t keep his bargains; that’s a damn dangerous thing to be. I don’t want to, I’ll admit. I would much rather hang out here, maybe head home long enough to get some clothes, all that mess, but it’s not happening. Look at it this way, though; I get it over with now, then we have however much longer we want to do whatever we want.” He shook his head, his hands on my shoulders heavily, concern etched on his face, and how the hell had I missed what he felt for so long? It really wasn’t like this was anything new, to tell the truth.

                “I don’t trust him.”

                “And I do? Come on, Johnny, I can take care of my damn self, okay? I know well enough what I can and can’t do. So, you can shut up and deal with it, and then I’ll come back at sunset, and we can do whatever you want, or I can just go back to my place afterwards and hang out with my dog and my cat.” He looked remarkably unwilling to do it, but he did nod once, stiff and looking as though he were giving me the finest of concessions.

                I disagreed with his assessment of that concession, of course, but I figured that, actually, it’d probably be the best one I got and probably I should damn well appreciate it. Boyfriend or not, he is still, first and foremost, a bastard.

                “Fine, Harry. Now, I assume you’d like some clothing, wouldn’t you?” I tilted my head, wondering why me wanting clothes mattered. Oh, Stones, he wasn’t about to pull out some stash of clothing suspiciously in my size, was he? I really, really hope that’s not the plan.

                “Um. Yes?” He nodded and stood, opening the smallish wardrobe on the other side of the room. Thankfully, though, the clothes he pulled out were very obviously his. He tossed them to me, and I grinned. “You know there’s no way in hell this stuff will fit me, right?” He shrugged.

                “I’ll assume it’s better than nothing, and that you’re in absolutely no position to complain.” True enough. I grinned and stood, shucking my own clothes off and relishing in the odd occurrence of someone’s eyes being fixated on me during such a task, given that I didn’t exactly have a whole hell of a lot to go around flaunting.

                Strangely enough, he seemed almost as interested in his clothes going on me, no matter how odd the fit was, given that everything was simultaneously too large and too small, my arms and my ankles being bared while a belt cinched to almost its tightest notch had to be used to keep the pants up and the shirt billowed almost as much as my duster around my shoulders and chest. I grinned at him, teasing, and swung my hips exaggeratedly as I walked out, the both of us knowing I was overdoing it and neither of us caring. He tilted my head down at the door and kissed me soundly, assuredly, and I realized the problem very suddenly.

                “I promise I’m coming back,” I mumbled against his lips, and he shuddered, nodding. It still looked like it was almost physically painful for him to step away from me, though, and when I opened the door and stepped towards Alessi and his car, both of which were settled at the end of the driveway, I saw him make an aborted grab for me. I wasn’t quite sure whether to be annoyed or flattered as I walked down to the other man, and finally settled on a frankly idiotic mixture of them both as I reached him and said hello as kindly as I could manage, which, looking back on it, was probably not very kind at all. He returned the greeting, smiling very politely and almost looking like he meant it as he opened my door for me.

                I thought, for a moment, that I might be able to get through the day with him relatively painlessly. He proceeded to grab my ass, I assume just to prove me wrong even in my own head. Obviously this was just going to go _swimmingly._ I almost wished that I was the kind of Wizard who went around breaking bargains as we drove away as I watched John’s slowly disappearing form from the side view mirror until I simply couldn’t anymore, at which point I turned to face Alessi and put on my game face. The quicker this was over with, I decided, the quicker I could go back there and… well, I didn’t quite know what I was going to do when I got back to John’s place, but it had to be at least a thousand times better than watching that stupid dumbass make kissy faces at me.

* * *

 

John’s POV

                I held out for approximately twenty minutes before I called for Hendricks, had him figure out where Alessi had planned on taking the other man (a relatively simple feat, given that I’d had his calls tracked prior to going after Arianna the day before), and started tailing them. I like to think that Harry would be proud of me for showing that much restraint.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one's getting posted a little later in the day than is usual for me, but to be perfectly honest, I sort of forgot that it was Wednesday until I happened to glance at a calender. But, in any case, hopefully the content makes up for it! As always, please enjoy!

Harry’s POV

                Alessi smiled at me, faint, obviously attempting to get me to warm up to him or something. I yawned, turning my head to gaze out the window and watch my city roll by, buildings and sidewalks and people and signs all blurring together in a mass of gray that flashed with bright, much-needed color. The sight of it, of the streets I’d walked a thousand times, streets I knew like I knew myself, made me offer my own pale smile. I would never, ever leave that city, I knew as much. It was mine, my home, my world. And John’s too, I admitted to myself, almost grudgingly despite the latest development in our… I guess relationship is the best word, huh? After all, I could see his marks on everything; the only thing he hadn’t done was sign his name where he’d touched. Probably would’ve if he could’ve, control freak that he is. Fucking bastard.

                I realized the thoughts were making my smile grow and cut them off; that was probably a bunch of really, really unhealthy thoughts to have. God, my friends were going to kill me. And Thomas was going to go kill John. I wondered if I could just pretend like nothing was going on before I realized that that would only make my inevitable death more painful, and would possibly incite John himself to help out in the moments before Thomas’ wrath came down upon his head. Hell’s Bells, thinking about this stuff should not make me smile!

                “Harry?” Alessi suddenly asked, and I could tell from the tone of his voice that it probably wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get my attention. Oh well; I’d told him that I’d pretend like I wanted to be there, not that I’d pay attention to him.

                “Huh?” I asked in reply, and he sighed, shaking his head.

                “I asked if you knew how to ice skate,” he said, and I blinked. Ice skating? That was his master plan? Whatever; probably he was expecting that he’d get to teach me, and therefore be allowed to touch me rather a lot. I grinned.

                “Yeah, actually. I used to go all the time, with my foster sister. There was a lake behind our house that’d always freeze solid enough to do it in winter. It helped teach grace and body control and all that other shit; same reason I learned ballroom dancing.” He tilted his head faintly, pulling the car into a hard left turn that nearly sent me colliding into him, but I grabbed the door hard to keep myself where I was.

                “Foster sister, Harry? I hadn’t known you were adopted,” he said, and I snorted.

                “Yeah, well, it’s not exactly the kind of thing you say when you first meet someone. Hi there, my name’s Harry Dresden! I was an orphan! Isn’t that neat and very important knowledge to you?” He seemed to flinch as he took a smallish side road that I was pretty sure led, eventually, to a larger ice skating rink in Park District.

                “If it makes you uncomfortable to discuss-,” he began, but I cut him off quickly.

                “It doesn’t make me _uncomfortable_ , Alessi, I said it wasn’t _important_. I don’t bring it up unless someone asks, or unless the subject happens to come up, because it’s not usually relevant. My mom died maybe ten or fifteen minutes after I was born, and my dad died when I was six, from an aneurysm. I went into the system. I grew up. I came here. Ra, ra.” He nodded, very slowly, like this was hard to understand. I sighed, deeply, looking back out the window again and he whipped into an outdoor ice skating rink’s parking lot and led me inside.

                Admittedly, I was kind of happy when we were renting skates; it’d been a long time since I’d skated, and I’d kind of missed it. Honestly, Thomas and I had planned to go more than once, but then just gotten caught up in something else and been unable to. I wiggled my toes in them and stepped carefully onto the ice, getting my bearings and my balance again after years off the ice. It was then, however, that I noticed that no one else was here. I turned my gaze to Alessi, stepping sure-footedly onto the ice like he’d done it every day of his life.

                “I rented the place for the afternoon,” he said, and I tensed my lips. Of course he had, the jackass. I started sliding forwards and remembered all at once the familiar motions of my feet and body as I glided over the smooth, solid ice, a laugh escaping unbidden from my throat as I did so. I felt almost like a kid again, for a moment, and attempted to do some kind of twirl that Elaine had once showed me. I stumbled and nearly fell on my ass as I remembered that Elaine had always been better on the ice than me, more graceful, steadier.

                Alessi skated over to me with quick, sharp movements, and took me by the arm. Or, at least he tried to; mostly he just got the baggy sleeve of John’s shirt.

                “Be careful,” he said, “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.” I glared as he gently tugged my body a little closer to his, his hand moving very slightly to find my arm instead of the sleeve. But, I’d made the damn promise; I couldn’t exactly refuse to allow him to touch me, at that point. He smiled like he’d won something and took me by the waist with his other hand, sliding us carefully backwards on the ice. The guy who’d rented the skates to us offered a smile like he was seeing something cute and I wondered if I could get prison time for kicking him in the teeth a few times.

                “What are you doing?” I asked as he moved me, and he smiled.

                “Skating.”

                “Let go of me, ass. I said I’d spend a day with you, not let you paw at me.” He got us to the center of the ice and stopped, not letting me go but loosening his grip.

                “Harry, will you not give me a chance? I like you, and I think that were I to be given the opportunity, I could make you like me as well.” I gave him my most saccharine smile and fluttered my eyes at him as best I could, although it probably wasn’t good; it’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to pull that move.

                “You know, it’s real funny; I’ve got this confusing habit of not liking the people who kidnap me and hold me against my will by way of magical devices given to them by a Vampire who has proven herself very willing and very able to murder me. I’m doing this to pay my debt, Alessi; I don’t want a single misconception about that. As soon as you drop me off today, I will be perfectly happy to never, ever see you ever again.” He made a frustrated noise and pulled me ever-closer, his one hand now joining the other at my waist and squeezing just a tad bit too hard, making my ribs ache faintly.

                “I was desperate, Harry! Of course I never thought I’d get you anywhere near me any other way. You were always too besotted with Johnny to spare me a second glance no matter how often I tried to speak with you whilst he was in command. When he pulled his stunt with that damn car… I saw it as my one chance, Harry, my opportunity to have what I’d always wanted.” Because that was going to change everything, of course. I didn’t recall ever speaking to him or meeting him before the incident, but I figured I might have; I don’t have the best memory for people who don’t particularly interest me, and Johnny… like him or not, he fills a room. It’s hard to find other people all that interesting when he’s around.

                “Weirdly enough, I don’t actually care. John and I… we’ve been through so damn much over the years, most of it totally terrifying and requiring us to put our lives in one another’s hands even when we didn’t want to. There’s a bond there. I wanted it broken for a long time; I thought hated him. I always thought he hated me back. And then I just… when he ‘died’, I realized that maybe I didn’t hate him so much after all. We weren’t together before his funeral, Alessi; I wouldn’t have even considered it. Now, though? Yeah. I don’t lie when I’m dating someone, and I’m dating him. Really you could almost say you helped bring us together.” I could feel his nails teasing at my flesh through the clothes, sharp and surely able to scratch me all to hell if he wanted to.

                The dangerous thing was in his eyes again, the sharpness, the cruelty that was purely human, purely spiteful, purely bitter. I lifted my chin because he didn’t frighten me, he never had, not really; he was, after all, nothing but a coward, nothing but second best, and a cheater to boot. If he thought he could scare me into submission with nothing more than strength and a hard stare, he had another thing coming, to be sure.

* * *

 

Marcone’s POV

                Harry was a fool; there could be no other explanation for it. He was a frustrating fool with no concept of when to shut up and when to fight. Depending on the day, and sometimes the hour, I either loved or hated this particular trait. Hiding in the ticket booth of an ice rink while he went on a romantic date with another man, I couldn’t quite decide which one I felt then.

                Mostly, I think, I was just pissed at Alessi for manhandling him; I only Nathan, my nearest and dearest friend, do that when I was particularly desperate. Harry stood staring down at him harshly, his eyes closed and hard and fixed firmly on the bridge of his nose even as Alessi tried valiantly to catch his eyes.

                His hands were tight around the man’s thin waist, gripping solidly and probably a touch painfully, but I could see no trace of discomfort on Harry’s face where he stood, doing his damndest to keep his hands off the other man no matter how he was maneuvered.

                I wished, very suddenly, that I could just watch Harry skate on his own for a time. That, after all, had been quite entertaining; his odd mixture of awkwardness and grace worked confusingly well for him on the ice, creating a sight I’d like to linger on. Perhaps, after all this was said and done, I’d take him here myself. After all, renting the place couldn’t have been that expensive, given that I’d been able to bribe my way into the ticket booth with ease.

                I shook my head; that was far from the prime time to be distracted by a happy future. Alessi appeared to be speaking, Harry snapping back at him with something that was surely sarcastic and suitably frustrating, and I almost wished I could get near enough to hear them speak. After all, I could do very little from where I stood, especially given that I would have a difficult time reaching them on the ice in my own slick bottom shoes. Oddly enough, I was certain that Harry wouldn’t appreciate having a knight in shining armor that fell on his ass on some ice in a rescue attempt. Or, more likely, he’d appreciate it as much as he appreciated anything I did for him, and would proceed to never let me forget about it for the remainder of my existence, while also telling the story to his friends so that they could allow me to never forget about it for the remainder of my existence as well.

                I’d have never thought that something like that would make me happy to consider. Of course, I’d also never thought that I’d find myself head over heels for a lanky Wizard either, but then life, I think, exists primarily to throw curveballs. I shook my head to rid myself of the musings and watched as Alessi pulled him closer, a snarl on his lips, his teeth flashing and his face curling into a caricature of humanity. Harry only let out what appeared to be a particularly biting laugh, his own face sparking with amusement. Alessi’s hands lowered, pawing at his hips, the spare curve of his ass, and I gritted my teeth, my hands clenching hard in the fabric of my pants. He only glared a little harder, though, squirmed a little in an effort to get him to move, but he squeezed even harder, hard enough that I was almost certain I’d see perfect bruises on him in the shape of the larger man’s hand.

                I could deal with it, though; after all, Harry had proven more than capable of looking after himself, and unless he happened to be  under the sway of something, I knew that no one would ever do anything to him that he didn’t want done. He was too stubborn, too brave, too strong, for anything else to be a reality. I thought of that, knew that, and used it to relax myself, to watch the goings on at least the slightest bit more detachedly.

                Or, at least, I attempted to do so until the moment that Alessi began to kiss him roughly, one of the hands moving from his lower half to hold his neck to keep him from escaping despite his sudden jolt, his sudden spark of jerky struggling against him. I could feel myself preparing to leave the booth and go after them, but a spark of reddish light burst from Harry’s fingertips along with his force spell, sending Alessi skittering clumsily away on the ice, only barely managing to catch himself. I only barely resisted the urge to start clapping, although I did find some amusement in imagining what Harry must’ve said afterwards to put that particular brand of enraged annoyance on Alessi’s face.

                God, but he was a strong man; always had been. Independent to a fault, sometimes foolishly so and often enough so that I grew annoyed. In cases like this, however, I’d not have him any other way. Especially since that did at least seem to put him off for a time, caused him to relegate himself to handholding that Harry seemed to allow only reluctantly to keep him quiet.

                They didn’t speak often and when they did, Alessi did most of the talking, the normally boisterous Wizard keeping himself clipped and short, heightening Alessi’s annoyance by degrees as he did so. They stayed for about a couple of hours, Harry sometimes extricating himself from Alessi and looking as if he were having fun despite himself, spinning clumsily or doing a simple trick, a simple formation, as if he were relearning steps to a long-forgotten dance. It was rare to see him look like that when he wasn’t doing magic, or something related to it.

                When they left, Alessi wrangled him close and held him tight, Harry allowing it with vengeance painted in his dark eyes as they got into Alessi’s car. I went back to where Hendricks was waiting with our vehicle and had him follow at a distance, him rolling his eyes the whole way as if he’d expected anything else of me.

                They stopped at a small café and had coffee that had a taste that made Harry cringe and ate sandwiches and small, sweet looking cookies. He bought a small box of those before he left, grinning at the cashier and convincing her to give him a couple for free without even trying to do so. I made a note to myself that he liked them, hoping to remember to pick some up for him, and perhaps a few other things with a similar taste. I had, after all, noticed over the years that he had an affinity for things with a lot of sugar, which, I assumed, was likely a byproduct of him using so much energy in his casting.

                In any case, after leaving the café, Alessi drove them to a relatively secluded park, one with nowhere for children to play and few places to sit, and led him to sit in a shady place even though the sun was beginning to lower by this point; it was perhaps an hour until dusk, at this point, and I was waiting eagerly for the moment it arrived so that I could put a stop to this idiocy.

                They sat quietly for a time, Harry tilting his head back and relaxing somewhat, apparently thinking that his actions at the ice rink had actually caused Alessi to give up. And, for a time, I thought as much too; after all, they did nothing but sit there silently, the only noise the faint rustling of the trees in the breeze. It was only after they’d been there for about a half hour that Alessi began to speak and reach for them again, his face calm and serious.

                I could imagine what he was saying, easily; confessions of love, of unending affection. I could feel myself tensing again where I hid, as I watched Harry reply almost angrily, his eyes shut as if he thought that would distance him from the other man, as if he thought that would make him fall silent. I thought him a fool again; you don’t take your eyes off your enemy, which Alessi proved when he fell on the thin man with all his weight, forcing him down yet again.

                Harry yelped, lashing out wildly in his shock and landing a particularly painful looking punch to Alessi’s nose that set it to bleeding. He made a noise like a wounded animal as he reeled back, clutching the injury as red leaked through his fingers, and Harry sat up, laughing madly. Alessi yelled, and I could tell that there was a newly nasally quality to his voice even though I couldn’t quite hear the words themselves.

                Harry rose to his feet, then, nearly seven feet tall and for once using that fact to appear at least somewhat imposing, his shoulders back, his spine straight even though it likely ached a bit to do so given how often he slouched to make himself appear at least a few inches closer to average. They argued a while, then, Harry keeping his distance with him and Alessi periodically moving as if to bring him down again.

                That, I decided, was a primary issue with him; he had a bad habit of underestimating Harry’s strength. He had never been and never would be any sort of expert at hand to hand, I knew that, but he could hold his own with many simply because of his experience. He fought like his tom cat, unrestrained and often unfair, taking every potshot he could whenever it was possible for him to do so, and because of this, he generally won, and this wasn’t even taking into consideration his magic or his staff work, both of which were truly a sight to behold in a fight. However, people never seemed to see that, to see the whipcord, runner’s muscle down his arms and his legs, and instead saw a tall, gangly, underfed man who refused to look people in the eye, who more listed than walked, who curled tightly into himself and away from the outside world.

                Generally, it amused me, seeing him prove people wrong when they underestimated him like that. Hell, he’d done it to me before, before I’d known him as well as I did then. Of course, it hadn’t been his strength I’d underestimated; that I’d seen from the start, the moment I’d met him. It had, actually, been his intelligence. I’d fallen for his harmless, silly, joking façade, seen him as an idiot gifted with too much power, power he couldn’t use wisely on his own. I’d thought to break him to my hand, then, to direct him; I’d been almost certain that I’d do it, too, after his capture by the Street Wolves and his agreement to sign my contract. He hadn’t, though; he’d fooled me. He’d fooled me, and I’d been hooked, determined to learn all I could about the man I’d misjudged, the man who’d outthought me.

                In Alessi’s case, though, it only bothered me. He’d been faced with all Harry could do more than once; he’d seen it, been bested by it. He still, however, insisted on thinking he could overpower him if only he kept trying. It was a fool’s errand and served only to prove to me that he didn’t deserve the Wizard in any capacity. No one who’d treat him thusly, like a weakling, deserved him. He was a man to stand beside, a man to hold as an equal at least. I glanced at the sky and found it to be darkening, at which point I stepped from my hiding place and made my way over. Harry just grinned, rolling his eyes, and waved at me.

                My shirt hung on him loosely, more ill-fitting than the majority of even his own clothing, but it still gave me a visceral thrill to see it. I reached out and put my arm around him, him leaning against me easily, as if he’d always done it.

                “Are you quite done?” I asked Alessi, attempting to inject all the anger, all the annoyance, I’d felt that day into the words. His chin went up, and he looked ready to speak, but I cut him off with a quick wave of my hand. “Of course, whether you are or you aren’t doesn’t actually matter. It is, after all, sundown, which was the agreed upon time for your little foray to end. Harry, I suppose you’re as uninterested in him as when you left with them this morning?” He was grinning again, his amusement present in his every feature.

                “I think less so, somehow. I didn’t actually think that was possible, but I think you criminal types are good at surprising people. You’ve refined your stalking skills, by the way. I only noticed you once today, back at the café; that’s weirdly unobtrusive for you.” I hid a smile behind my hand and turned with him, walking towards my car. Alessi caught my arm this time, and I sighed. While it would likely be quite pleasurable to beat him into an ever-loving pulp, a park was far from the best venue to do so. As such, I simply jerked it free rather than doing anything I actually wanted to do.

                “Don’t ignore me,” he hissed, and I raised an eyebrow.

                “Perhaps when you give either of us a reason to pay attention. I’ll expect you to formally resign any power you once claimed in my absence tomorrow morning, by the way. Get a good night’s sleep for me, would you?” And then we left to the sound of his hissing swears, his boiling angry, Harry snickering under his breath the entire time as if he’d never seen anything funnier in his life, as if the past few weeks had been little better than a long, hilarious joke.

                To be purely honest, it actually upset me a bit. He’d been in such peril, such danger, gone through so much, and yet it was all just another wrinkle in his normal life. I squeezed him tightly as I escorted him to the car and got into the backseat with him instead of the front seat with Hendricks.  

                He leaned against me, still laughing faintly and sometimes shaking his head, his hand on mine and his fingers curled loosely around mine. I touched the joints of his fingers lightly, marveling at how thin the bones felt, how fragile, despite the man they were attached to. His laughter faded as he watched me, and was replaced with something like confusion, as if he’d never imagined anything like this, and perhaps, I supposed, he hadn’t.

                “What?” he finally asked me, wiggling against me, and I chuckled myself, finally, shaking my head.

                “Nothing, Harry. I’m glad that…,” I tried, and found that I wasn’t entirely certain about what I was glad about, specifically, only that I was glad. He nodded like I’d finished.

                “I’m glad too, John. It’s been a long time,” he said, softly, squeezing my fingers again and allowing his head to settle against my shoulder. His hair tickled my neck and my jaw and his faint stubble was a soft rasp where it touched. I swallowed stiffly, feeling very suddenly and uncomfortably like a teenager in the backseat with his date on prom night. He laughed again, quiet as before, this time shaking his head, and I finally sighed.

                “What in god’s name do you keep laughing about? These past few weeks… there’s been little comedy, I’m afraid.” He shrugged as best he could from his angle.

                “I’m still alive. I beat the bad guy. I pissed an asshole off. I got a boyfriend. There’s plenty to laugh about; I’m laughing about all of it. Sometimes life just gets… I’ve got to laugh or I might start crying, you know?” I did know, although perhaps I let it out in other ways. Most often, recently, on the heavy bag in the small gym a few doors down from my home office. I nodded and his laughter faded back to giggles again as we pulled up to my home. He didn’t let go of my hand as we went inside, and I saw Hendricks shake his head bemusedly as we went inside, probably going to find Gard and discuss the Twilight Zone-esque events he’d just witnessed.

                He paused in the entryway, though, looking a touch lost, as if he had no idea where to go or what to do. He settled his bag on my coatrack and I smiled, shaking my head and turning him to face me.

                “What do you want?” I asked him, and I could see his emotions flashing across his eyes like lightning. Fear, indecision, a moment where he thought of bolting, and then… that bravery again. Pride, and a decision. He was on me like a forest fire in seconds, lurching into me desperately, and what he lacked in skill was more than made up for in eagerness. I tensed, for a moment, taking in his clenched eyes, his fingers gripping my lapels like lifelines, and I relaxed myself immediately, wrapping my arms around his waist and moving my own lips against his, taking over for him as my own eyes closed.

                He let me, a quiet noise working its way from his throat, almost but not quite a whimper. I’d never thought I’d ever hear something like that coming from him, and especially never thought that he’d ever press me into a wall, hold me close and tight and hard.

                I hit the wall hard and accidentally nipped his lip. He jerked away, his eyes flashing open, almost all pupil and hazy with lust.

                “Hell’s Bells,” he whispered, his hands shaking a bit, his chest heaving, and I was sure that I was in much the same state. I chuckled, faint, quiet.

                “Harry, at this point, I must suggest that you either spend the night in your own home, or follow me to my bedroom.” He swallowed convulsively, hands shaking still, shuddering with his whole body, and his eyes flashed over to the door once, twice, before he began making his way to the stairs. “Are you certain?” I asked, catching up with him quickly and moving ahead of him, and he glared down at me.

                “If you start acting like I don’t know what I’m doing, Marcone, I _will_ leave. Probably when your pants are down so you can’t come after me quickly.” I laughed, my voice more breathy than I recalled it being in some time, as I forced open my door and led him inside, almost corralling him to the bed.

                He still looked cagey, of course, unsure, but I laid him carefully across the bed nonetheless, my fingers working over the buttons with ease and pulling it over his shoulders. He snorted, lunging upwards and kissing me again, halfway knocking me off of him with the force of it. When he pulled away, he was grinning and his own hands were yanking my jacket off and flinging my jacket away, running over my tie and accidentally pulling it uncomfortably tight before he managed to get it off of me as well.

                “Christ,” I managed, watching him work, and his grin grew wider.

                “I have done this before, you know. You don’t have to treat me like some scared virgin, you dumbass,” he told me, voice almost matter-of-fact as my shirt went flying and he moved on to my pants. His fingers were surprisingly deft over the belt, the button, the zip, but I caught them and stopped them, attempting to wrangle him back down, him wriggling and half-fighting against it the whole while.

                “I had assumed. I don’t, however, think wanting to see to you first is treating you like a ‘scared virgin’.” He laughed, biting, and set to running his hands over my chest, his touches feather-light and more exploratory than anything. His laughter, his amusement, faded, and his face took on a serious set. The ticklish fingers teased down my sides and I resisted the urge to move away from the sensation out of a desire to allow him to do as he liked.

                “Can I… look, I want to… would you lay down for me?” he asked, and I raised an eyebrow, wondering what he had planned, what he couldn’t seem to bring himself to ask for. Still, I assumed whatever it was would be as harmless as anything; I couldn’t imagine that he’d get me here only to hurt me somehow. He wasn’t the type. I got off of him and laid down myself. It took him a moment to get over the surprise at my compliance, but after that, he was eager again, hands getting my slacks and my underwear off and flinging them towards the same undetermined location as the rest of my clothing.

                His hands were gentle on my hips, his eyes wide and almost amazed, and I could see him taking everything in, see the sudden shock of, “I’m in bed with a man, I’m in bed with a criminal scumbag, what do I do?” before he fought it back again and smiled and bent almost double over me.

                He kissed me soundly, then, and sweetly, before his mouth began to move steadily downwards. A light kiss to my jaw would transform to a faint nuzzle of my neck, a warm press down the center of my chest, my stomach, and my hands clenched in the bedding underneath me. My breath came out in harsh pants that I tried hard to control, and he gave me another teasing look that I knew meant that he knew exactly what I was doing, and exactly why I was doing, and that he was almost certainly going to make me stop doing it.

                He nipped the hollow of my hip lightly and I knew suddenly exactly what he’d planned to do. His breath was almost a weight in and of itself, warm and inviting, and when he looked at me next, his eyes were a perfect match. I shook, much though I was loathe to admit it.

                “Harry,” I attempted, and he smiled again.

                “I want to. Can I?” And how could I refuse, honestly? I nodded and relaxed, allowing him to put his mouth on me. My hips jerked upwards at the first touch of his tongue, his lips, and I could feel him gag, could see the hard, annoyed glare he shot up at me. I tried to offer an apology, but he simply dropped an arm across my hips and went back to his task whole-heartedly, obviously untried but learning quickly from my reactions what I liked and what I didn’t, slowly working himself lower, taking more in his mouth rather than his hand. He found a rhythm he could handle quickly, and I often fought against the weight of his arm, fought to further enter the warmth of his mouth, get more of the careful swipes of his tongue.

                It made him chuckle around me, and the sudden vibration tore a low, desperate noise from my throat. I jerked upwards, my body curling over his, my hands grasping for his hair and curling into it tightly, pulling him away. He blinked up at me confusedly, lips reddened and somewhat swollen from his task, cheeks flushed a pretty shade of pink. I tried to speak but couldn’t, and he looked somewhat depressed.

                “Sorry,” he said, “I’ve never-,” but I shook my head.

                “You were good. Fantastic. Not yet, though, I don’t want to-,” I began and understanding dawned on his face as he nodded.

                “Okay.” And then he was on his back, starting at his own belt (my belt, something in me spoke, my clothes. My Harry) before I swatted his hand away and started in on the task myself. The first moment of him being bared to me was… I’d never imagined it would happen, in truth. I’d never thought I’d see him this way, flushed and smiling and willing and perfect beneath me. I pressed kisses to his stomach, soft, and he giggled, sometimes jerking into my mouth and sometimes away from it, depending on how sensitive the skin I was touching happened to be.

                I touched his dick softly and didn’t expect the almost explosive reaction I got, the sudden yell, the stretch of his neck as his back arched, and felt like a pirate who’d finally found the X that marked the spot.

                “My,” I said, loosening my grasp and twisting up the length of him calmly, “how unexpected.” He clenched his teeth, writhing under my hand, making short, jerky, aborted motions into the touch.

                “Shut up,” he hissed through clenched teeth, “It’s not like I do this often, okay?” As if he needed some form of justification for being touch hungry, for wanting this. I shook my head, smiling myself, now, as I made my way between his legs, as he spread them obligingly.

                “I’m not displeased,” I said, and he snorted.

                “Of course you’re not. Control freak stalker scumbag bastard,” he said, all in one breath and without pause, which I found truly impressive. I shook my head, deciding in a moment to return the favor he’d given me and lowering my own mouth onto him. He screamed, his body going taut underneath me, his fists beating a staccato rhythm against the bed at his sides, and finally the screaming abated into a round of muted swearing as I worked.

                It had been years since I’d done this; I hadn’t exactly had many opportunities. This was often… frowned upon, to say the least, in my profession, at least in regards to a serious relationship. Still, I was perfectly willing to relearn the task as I tasted him, as I worked him over and made him release sounds that I knew he’d deny later. I pushed his legs farther apart as he twisted, fighting against thrusting into my mouth, his eyes screwed shut and a little wet at the sides, one of his hands going up to his mouth to bite at his fist so he could keep himself quiet.

                I suppose the truly surprising part, though, was that he didn’t protest when I removed myself from him for a moment to wet my fingers, and only responded with a low groan when I got the first one inside him and put my mouth back on him.

                I moved the appendage carefully as I distracted him with my mouth, wearing down whatever resistance I found by degrees as he grew ever more desperate beneath me, obviously unsure of whether to move against the intrusion or my mouth even as I slid the second finger in and stretched them as much as I dared.

                He yelled again at that, his fist falling away, his toes curling where they’d found a place against my calves, and I finally noticed that he was actually producing words.

                “John, John, John, damn it, fuck you fuck you fuck you,” he said, over and over with only slight variations to sometimes introduce new swears into the mix. I smirked around him and crooked my fingers carefully, finally finding the place I sought as he screamed again, the wetness at the corners of his eyes streaming slowly down the sides of his face as the pleasure bit at him, likely almost too intense, too much he wasn’t used to at once. I used the opportunity to get the last finger in and he keened. “I really, really hate you so damn much you stupid ass,” he managed to hiss out, and I released him from my mouth carefully.

                “Is that so? I suppose I’d best stop then, hm?” I asked, pressing against that place once more. He growled.

                “Stop now and I’ll kill you. I might kill you anyway if you don’t get on with it.” I laughed, blew lightly where I’d been sucking, and he shuddered. “Stars,” he managed, as I stretched the fingers once more, resulting in his legs sprawling wide and a desperate noise from deep within his chest. I dubbed him as ready as he’d get at that, and slid the fingers away. The first sign of protest emerged at that, but still he helped me maneuver his legs so they were over my shoulders, so I could, carefully, press my way into him.

                I don’t know which of us screamed at that; perhaps it was both. I couldn’t, in any case, imagine a more wonderful, perfect moment than that. My hands shot to his hips, squeezing probably a bit too tightly as I began to move against him, as he tried to move with me.

                I angled myself towards where I knew I could make him see stars, to end him faster, as I was quite certain that I wouldn’t last long there, in that tight heat, the press of him all around me, nearly burning me as if I were holding the element he favored rather than the man himself.

                His hand shot to his dick like lightning as he moved, and I allowed it even though something in me wanted to insist on doing it myself, even though I thought he handled himself a bit too roughly, his hand twisting harshly. It was a bit of a shock when he came, though, as there had been next to no warning, but suddenly, after a particularly hard thrust from me to that place inside him, he was moaning, going tense, arching his back beneath me so much that our chests nearly touched.

                He tensed around me, too, enough so that I had to still for fear of coming as well, and then he fell almost entirely limp and boneless. He smiled up at me hazily and moved his hips once, a clear indication for me to go on until I was finished.

                The lazy look of him, the gentle, easy way in which he was acting, incited me to a strange roughness. I squeezed his hips hard and jerked into him, avoiding his prostate as I knew he couldn’t take the stimulation then. Still, I got a few whimpers, a few stilted moans, for my efforts, and when I came, he shuddered around me, his eyes flickering closed as his legs fell from my shoulders, as I softened and slipped out of him. He twitched as some of my come trickled from him, down his thighs, and I could only laugh quietly to myself as I collapsed on top of him, being only careful enough to avoid injuring him.

                He stroked my back and my hair clumsily, snickering at whatever noise I made (he later claimed that I sounded like Mister when he purred) and drifting off into a light sleep. I stayed there for some time, relishing in the warmth, the comfort of his hold, until I was finally forced to give into my discomfort at the stickiness, wet a rag from my bathroom, and clean him off cursorily before I stripped off the bedding that had gotten dirty, tossed the rag away, and fell into bed beside him, curling closely around him to keep him warm as I too fell into sleep.

* * *

 

                The next morning was… busy, to say the least. Alessi arrived early, but Hendricks kept him penned in the front room for a while until I awoke, dressed, and made my way downstairs, leaving Harry sleeping comfortably, sprawled across my bed like he’d always been there. He clenched his teeth at my somewhat mussed state, and I knew he could tell what had happened, knew that it set him on edge, but I only offered him a sedate, urbane smile, and led him to my office to start making calls.

                “Was he good?” he hissed at me, bitterness present in every note of his voice, and I only smiled again. It wasn’t as if he truly mattered anymore in any case, after all.

                “Well, Mr. Alessi, I must say that information is quite personal and does not, in fact, pertain to you in any way. Now, I would ask that you sit down and start making a few calls with me so that we can make certain that everyone knows who is in power here.” I’d never seen the man so angry and unable to do a damn thing about it but bite his tongue. “And afterwards, of course, I would like to make it known amongst my people that you are no longer welcome in Chicago.”

                The visceral pleasure at the words, at the calls that happened afterwards, had me hiding smiles behind my hand. I had won; perhaps not in the way I’d thought I would, but I’d won nonetheless. Chicago was still mine. Harry was my lover. The dissension had left my ranks. Alessi, by the end of the day, would be gone. I finished the last call and offered him a polite smile.

                “You don’t deserve him,” he growled at me, apparently as a goodbye. I chuckled.

                “So I realize; no one does. But, I’m afraid, he picked me. It’s over, Alessi. I win.” And, given that I’d gotten in my last word, I stood and left. I can only assume that Hendricks came in to escort him out, out of my home and out of my city. For my own part, I went back up to my bedroom, finding Harry still lying on my bed, half-awake now, smiling when he saw me. I climbed back into the bed beside him calmly, and he allowed his head to droop onto my chest.

                “I’m going to hurt you, you know that, right?” he told me through a yawn. I bit back a smile.

                “And why is that?”

                “My ass hurts. And so does my jaw. And I’m hungry.” I shook my head.

                “I’ll call in for breakfast and some Tylenol. Will that get me out of the doghouse?” He grinned, his eyes sparkling.

                “It’s a start. Love you, Johnny.” I stroked his hair, wondering when my luck had turned so violently and blessing the day I’d gotten him in my car, the day my life had gotten twisted onto its head forevermore.

                “And I you, Harry,” I replied, and that, I supposed, was that. I couldn’t imagine a better way for the story to end than to be beside him, to be his shoulder and his hand, to help him fight, to save our city. I’ve never believed in anything close to perfection, in happy endings. Harry, it seemed, was perfectly willing to prove me wrong once more and force one on me. I could, by no means, claim to be distressed by that.  


End file.
